CRITICAL GAMEPLAY

Healer is a game designed around one of the oldest digital game mechanisms  -- shooting. The goal of the project was to critique the assumptions around the shooting mechanic of historical games. While games as early as Space War offered shooting, it wasn't until such shooting was historicized that it really adopted a strong link to historical narratives. Games such as 1942 played to the then popular romanticization of WWII war actions and the destruction they caused as often portrayed in films (Pollard, 2002). It is one of several games in the Critical Gameplay game series.