Recursion

As a component of fractal geometry and a programming technique, recursion has been a fundamental part of games for a long time – though it’s only in the past few years that creators have started to really explore how it might work as a core mechanic. Manifold Garden’s infinitely repeating architecture is one striking example, while Innerspace VR’s escapepuzzler A Fisherman’s Tale presented worlds nested within worlds, like a particularly complex Russian doll. The concept was recently explored by game developer and YouTuber Sam Hogan, who released free 16-level puzzler Game Inside A Game on itch.io (available at bit.ly/ hogan_recursive): here, you jump into and out of square rooms to grow and shrink, with gravitational twists, infinite staircases and double recursion enabling you to make multiple copies of yourself.

This year, the IGF-winning Patrick’s Parabox will offer a similarly intricate matryoshka of puzzles, its Sokoban-style challenges requiring you to push entire miniature worlds around – each containing smaller versions of yourself – or to squeeze your way into and out of them. And Annapurna’s Maquette (pictured) uses the concept to help tell a love story. In it, manipulating objects inside a scale model allows you navigate the world beyond it, and vice versa.

The blockbuster space has so far resisted the temptation to attempt such Inception-style trickery, which is a surprise given Nolan’s film’s obvious debt to the medium. But at a time when triple-A sandboxes are getting bigger and their horizons more distant, it’s heartening to see some game-makers turning their gaze inward, and finding creative magic within the very foundations of videogames.