When I was little I never wanted to play with any of the neighborhood kids. If they came by asking my mom if I could come out with them, I would beg her to tell them I wasn’t home or I wasn’t allowed to. I was perfectly content with my own company—playing with my dolls, writing stories, or building things out of scrap wood I stole from my dad. The girls in my neighborhood were all older than me, often too old for make believe, and that was fine, but I still preferred the imaginary games I invented with my friends at school. So, at home and in the absence of my school friends, I chose to play alone.
This time last year I was halfway through my senior year of college, and I found myself wondering again what game I was going to play both on my Nintendo Switch and in my life. Should I finally pick up Spiritfarer or go to graduate school? Should I start working full time or take a stab at a title I’d seen floating around, Lil Gator Game? Despite being in limbo, I wasn’t too worried about who I would play with. Being an antisocial kid has led to being a selective adult, so I have a general faith in the strength of my relationships. I knew I’d find ways to stay connected with my roommates once we all moved out, and I had people who were always down for a Lil Gator Game session, so rather than worry about graduate school I set out to help the little gator with his own struggles.
The goal of Lil Gator Game is to help the titular little gator get his big sister to play with him like she did when they were children. This is achieved by traversing the island on which the game is set to solve puzzles, complete timed trials, play through obstacle courses, and beat mini games. You skateboard around waterparks and vanquish enemies made of cardboard, slowly but surely rebuilding the imaginary childhood games that you and your sister used to play.
The first time I played Lil Gator Game, I was mostly struck by how lovingly it frames the act of play and creation. As someone who also grew up playing with their older sibling and creating my own games, I felt connected to the little gator every time he invented a story or built something out of cardboard or begged his big sister to play with him. Lil Gator Game was, to me, a celebration of childhood and imagination. It still is but, coming back to it a year later, I find myself focusing on a different aspect: friends.
A key tenet of Lil Gator Game is making friends. You start with your core group of pals who resolve to help you in your quest to play with your sister again. However, they are just a fraction of the characters you’re going to meet throughout the course of the game. You’ll meet people like Esme the bat, Gunther the hippo, and Twig the Pomeranian among a litany of other friends, and they each serve a different purpose. Gunther, for example, starts off as wanting to be the little gator’s sidekick. But when he finds he cannot keep up with him, he instead goes to hang out with Tom, the alpaca who doesn’t move much anyway.
However, you don’t have to be friends with everyone on the island. Some characters you have to interact with to complete the mainline story, but the rest? It’s largely up to your discretion who you want to play with. Some characters offer items and power-ups you may want when you complete their quest, others teach you new mechanics, and still some are there merely to develop the flavor of Lil Gator Game itself. But you don’t have to interact with everyone. If you decide a scooter doesn’t serve your play purposes, you don’t have to befriend the character that has it. If you do want to learn how to ragdoll, you can ask a friend to show you once you complete their quest. These moments happen over and over in Lil Gator Game, and they’re really what pushes the story along.
A year later I still find myself at a crossroads of what game I want to play. Should I finally beat Breath of the Wild, or do I even really want to go to grad school? Do I want to move to a small town and not speak to anyone for a year, or should I just get really good at Tetris 99? But this time, a year later, I think I’m returning to my childhood roots and I’m more concerned with who I want to play the game with. I no longer live with my college roommates, and there aren’t many people readily available to play Lil Gator Game with me anymore. But growing up and out doesn’t mean I’ll play with any neighborhood kid who asks my mom if I can come out—if anything it means I have to be pickier than ever because I have less and less room for the relationships that don’t serve me.
Much like the little gator, if I meet a friend who offers a scooter I simply don’t want or need, I probably won’t invite them to play the game with me. I’m sure they’ll find someone else who can use the scooter! But if I meet a friend who can teach me how to write the perfect grad school application, then they’re coming with me. That’s why I like Gunther the hippo so much—when he found he couldn’t keep up with the little gator, he elected to be a better friend to someone else. It may have hurt me, the player, in a parasocial way, but if Gunther couldn’t serve the little gator in a way that made the game easier and more enjoyable, then he had to go. I am sure these kinds of interactions will happen to me over and over and over until I die, but until then I will continue to play the game. And until then I will play with people who make the game both complex and simple, challenging and fun, and who want to play the game with me.
Maddie Agne is a Paste intern.