A Slow Year is actually a collection of four games, one for each season. The games, as Bogost describes on his blog,  “are neither action nor strategy: each of them requires a different kind of sedate observation and methodical input.”

“As games, these rely on the procedural representation of an idea that the player manipulates. As poetry, they rely on the condensation of symbols and concepts rather than the clarification of specific experiences. As images, they offer visually evocative yet obscure depictions of real scenes and objects. They are inspired by ideas or experiences I encounter, as attempts to capture something fundamental about how they work. Game poems aspire, perhaps, toward a kind of video game version of Imagism, if we expand ‘image’ to include a logic or behavior as its subject,” he adds on his blog bogost.com.

A Slow Year will be released this fall as a limited edition Atari cartridge and on PC and Mac with an Atari emulator. A book of poetry also accompanies the game.