I never find myself truly lost in such a game the way I am in Civilization or Starcraft. This is also true in certain strategy games where the consequences play out in subtler ways, like when a simple click takes the place of timely diplomatic words that prevent a deadly war.įor me, tower defense games have almost always been chained to the mouse.

Obviously using a button isn’t the same as shooting a gun or swinging a weapon, but the consequences of using that button (the right combination of sound effects and character animations, for example) can make it feel like you are. Diablo 3 turns tapping a button into swinging a sword or axe into a demon’s skull. A good first person shooter, like Half-Life or Wolfenstein, will make the mouse’s buttons feel like a trigger.

Games designed to be escapist fantasies have to make the input device (whether it’s a mouse or a controller) more than simply an input device. The chief problem that most tower defense games face is how they often fail to draw the player into the game and make them forget that they are clicking a mouse repeatedly. Go to Bed: Survive The Night is a “bedroom defense” game that instead smacks of cutesy horror, the likes of The Nightmare Before Christmas and “Monster Mash.” While this decision may disappoint at first, it makes a certain kind of sense: a simple aesthetic for what is ultimately a simple game. This is not the videogame developer Touchfight Games has made. It’s where ungodly specters are given demonic form or where your run-of-the-mill toaster can suddenly unplug itself from the wall, grow arms and go to town on your ankles with a butter knife.

A child’s overactive imagination can be the scariest place in the universe.

Survive the nights