Tokyo Jungle

Tokyo Jungle is one of the gamiest games I have played in a long time and has a particularly "arcade" (though not modern of course) style mechanic.

One of the reasons it feels a little arcade is that there is no real introduction to the setup and you just pick an animal and are dropped in without an explanation, a little like this.

For an unknown reason, Tokyo has no humans left and there are a selection of animals roaming the streets of Tokyo* (Shibuya [link] to be more specific). Once you have selected a character/species to play as, you must try to survive to the point where you can pass your genes on. And then you start again. And again, and again. In a nutsehell, that is it - a very simple game.

At first, you must select an animal from a restricted selection (further animals are unlocked by completing their predecessor's challenges) broadly split into carnivores and herbivores. Then, you are dropped into Shibuya and the game starts.

You have three gauges at the top left and these are what you must manage to progress:

LIFE - once this is gone, you die.

HUNGER - shows whether you need food or not.

STAMINA - shows how much you can dash.

If you do nothing at all, your HUNGER meter drops at a rate depending on what animal you are and once your HUNGER is at zero, you will start losing LIFE slowly but surely. You can also lose LIFE by taking damage in attacks from other animals (or once you are poisoned). There is also a TOXICITY meter that appears after some time which will increase the longer you spend in polluted areas or eat contaminated food.
You gain LIFE when you have anything in your HUNGER meter and are not mid-battle. You gain HUNGER by eating food (meat or vegetation depending on which animal you are - no omnivores here).
Essentially keep eating to stay alive.
The other main factor to consider is age and as you get beyond a certain age, your life will drain away and you will die.

You can't defeat time - but you can pass your genes on.

As in real life, this involves finding a mate. In order to find a mate, you have to make it safe for them by claiming a territory (I'll let you work out how territory is marked as yours) and then impressing them - though this is achieved by simply walking near them. If only. If only.
There are three classes of mate (male and female) from "desperate" to "prime" and you must be of a higher class yourself (ie levelled up with calorific intake) in order to get each one. The desperate ones will chase you, and give you fleas though, so be careful!
And then you must take them (unconditional love = they will follow you) to a nest to perform. The first few times, this is really comic as the screen fades to black and you hear a wolf howl. And then you have a new generation of whatever animal you are. Simple. They are slightly improved depending on the stats you had and what type of mate you got. Those are the building blocks of life and the building blocks of the game.

There are plenty of other elements to consider but the basics are that. Stay alive long enough through harsh environments to pass on your genes and keep going until it all gets too much. I can liken it to the gradual ratcheting up in Tetris as you pass a level as each time decade or so, the world becomes a little harsher with more rain (lowering visibility), less easy meat, more battles with larger animals or groups and more toxicity in the air. The questions arise:
   Is it worth eating that toxic meat? (HUNGER down... TOXICITY up)
   Should I risk a clean kill on the crocodile?

The fun, or my fun, is from how deconstructed a game it is - and so you can break down each "run" into clear tactics. As there are a number of optional tasks to be completed in discrete timeframes (eg between year 20 and 30 kill 20 animals) which are given to you from the start of each run, you can plan it out. So, if you have to be at the train station at year 30, you should plan a path for that. It is that laying bare of the game system that makes it feel so fair - your enemies may be random but there is usually nobody to blame if it goes wrong. Each element of the game from the impending doom to the frequency of battle seems carefully controlled and you will spend a lot of time scavenging and balancing up risks versus rewards.

There is an element of padding the game out as there is a survival mode and a story mode whereby you complete a number of challenges to progress the (clearly insane) story but the mechanics do not change significantly. The structure is such that you play "survival" to find the flags to trigger the story mode (memory cards left behind). As a result, in order to progress in the story, you must switch between the two as you cannot collect story cards until you finish a certain number of chapters and you cannot find story cards outside survival mode.

There are many animals but they are not hugely dissimilar and could be seen as derivative of other species rather than having different skillsets and so, with enough levelling, some animals can be identical. Some, however, cannot.

I'm not sure what the purest game I've ever played is and I'm no longer sure what that even means. The game I had always considered "purest" was a section within the game Rez called trancemission. Rez is an musical on-rails shooter that came out in 2001. It was pretty short, partly as it was a pretty fresh concept (before the western fascination with music games really took off), but it had quite a few unlockables when you completed it. One of those unlockables was a mode called "trancemission" that had looping music which had to be heard to understood, no score, no difficulty and a repetitive, simplistic game mechanic. It did not even yield a reward as you could not finish it - it was the reward. So the only reason to play was whether you enjoyed it or not - I think that is pretty pure. Some might say that is true of any other game but I think this is more of a stark, binary choice. I played it quite a lot - it was strangely compelling:

This game always feels very pure because of the presentation and simplicity of concept. I think most people will be able to understand it and it does not really hide anything from you so in that respect, it is very accessible and playable. The insanity of the idea will bring people in (I'd hope) and hopefully they'll stay after playing the game. The "mating" scenes are a great indication of the game actually - initially seems silly/stupid but it makes sense within the game and it has a gameplay reason too. This means that you will probably know within one playthrough (or "credit") whether you would like the game or not.
I loved it.

Tokyo Jungle has been released on PS3 and funded by Sony (Japan) in their Indie scheme called PlayStation C.A.M.P! (Creator Audition Mash up Project!).

You can buy it here [link] and it is playable on PS3 and PS Vita with remote play.

There is also a mobile version but I have not played it.

*The use of real places in Japan for games is increasingly common and this is especially the case for Shibuya - i got lost here many years ago [link].