Batman: Affleck Origins, Cumberbatch It!, and more Games That Might Have Been
Part of the young Play The Year tradition is a fanciful interlude featuring games that we wish could exist. Our Play The Year developers worked to transform a few of the year’s events into playable form. (UPDATE: And one of them is still working—the last game has been delayed.)
But illustrator Nick Wanserski chooses to live in the realm of the hypothetical, and he has whipped up concept art for four games inspired by the pop culture of 2013. These are the Games That Might Have Been.
Batman: Affleck Origins
It’s the casting choice that launched a thousand furious Internet screeds! In Batman: Affleck Origins, you play as a rogue casting director who must sign the beloved Gigli star to play the world’s most popular superhero, no matter the cost. Run a brutal gauntlet of unrelenting genre fans, each armed with their comprehensive lists of who would make a better Batman—or at the very least, point-by-point explanations of why Ben Affleck is so, so wrong for this role.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Nitpicker Pro!
Everyone knows going to the movies is fun. But now, thanks to the help of Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, it no longer has to be! The famed astrophysicist raised a stink on Twitter this year when he picked apart the dubious science of Gravity, a movie that, according to Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, “should be renamed ‘Angular Momentum.’” Now, with Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson’s new game, you can hone your ability to ignore the excitement of cinema and uncover the technical errata dwelling in the margins of every film.
Game Of Thrones: How Red Is Your Wedding?
Viewers hoping that Game Of Thrones might ratchet up the gore and sadness this year were delighted by season three, especially when the episode “The Rains Of Castamere” unleashed the Red Wedding on unsuspecting fans. In How Red Is Your Wedding?, you get the chance to take the series’ ruthless proclivities even further. You play a simple country lord, pushed beyond reason when a heartless would-be king spurns your beloved child. (Or is it grandchild? It’s impossible to keep track.) But that doesn’t mean the wedding is off! Oh, no. As you take aim in this shooting gallery filled with hated Starks, despised Stark allies, and strongly disliked Stark pets, you’ll ensure that it’s a red-letter day.
Cumberbatch It!
If you were producing or releasing a motion picture in 2013, the one essential ingredient was Benedict Cumberbatch. Everyone’s favorite thin-lipped glower-meister showed up in Star Trek Into Darkness, 12 Years A Slave, August: Osage County, and The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug, among others. In coming attractions, he’s slated to appear as an explorer of the Amazon, a pioneer of computing, and maybe some Star Wars dude. Is there any role Cumberbatch can’t play? That’s the question you’ll seek to answer in Cumberbatch It!. The object of the game is to guide the brooding star through eight levels of increasingly improbable roles. Maybe Cumberbatch will turn heads as a plucky backup quarterback who wins the big game against all odds, or maybe he’ll take on the lead role in a Georgia O’Keeffe biopic. You’ll never know until you Cumberbatch It!