The Universal Language

The Bride and I went to Finland a few years back to see the Eurovision Song Contest finals in Helsinki. For the night of the finals, The Bride got a ticket but I did not. So I ended up at a party in the city. These were friends of friends, and only a few folks there spoke English. As it happened however, many of the people at the people were similarly 'orphaned' with partners at the actual show. What was odd, was that there were many people there who did not just speak English, but did not even speak the same language. There was Finnish, Japanese, English, etc., it was a house party of Babel.

When I arrived at the party there were still a few hours left before Eurovision came on TV. So there was a roomful of folks, eating and drinking, and sitting in front of a big screen television - but no one was talking. Well, we tried to talk, we just weren't doing very well at actually communicating.

Then someone turned on the game thingy and we all began taking turns playing a game. It was a simple game, understandable to all of us, and we bonded quite quickly while playing and taking turns. The game was about microscopic creatures eating smaller microscopic creatures while trying not to be eaten by even bigger ones. As the main little guy got bigger and evolved, so did the prey and the predators. It was fun, and by the time Eurovision started, we were all pretty much Babel friends. I never knew what the game was called, but I liked it quite a bit.

So when I finally figured out how to download demos from the PlayStation Store, there was a game that looked similar, so I got it. Lo and behold, I was right, that game from Helsinki was called Nucleus.



I was able to play it for a while. There doesn't seem to be much more to it than I had seen before. Mostly racing the clock, dodging cells and grabbing sunshiny things. This is a good demo download, very much a game I would consider buying to try and play. Also, it might be a step toward world peace. I wonder if President Obama has a PS3?