Making Soup

Sometimes you find a game that gains extra value from the outside rather than within. Infused with a piece of *us* it transforms to something more meaningful than what it offers on its own. Nom Nom Galaxy is that game for me. Bear with me while I explain.

My mother was a baker. She worked early morning shifts at weekends and so, most Saturdays, I would be waiting at my Nans until she finished. Except there wasn't an awful lot to do and it was no fun just waiting. So I would eagerly wait till eleven and then rush-walk down to the bakery to meet mum.

It always felt special. Pushing between overgrown plants in the back alleyway and sneaking in the bakers door. The enticing smell of bread floating through the worn old doorway.  Hot air brushing cheeks as bakers slammed oven doors. I'd scuttle down past the rolling-tables until I got to mum and that pragmatic, short greeting you get from someone in the middle of something. "Hi Love."

Most visits I would just watch her going through various time tested rhythmic processes. Rolling out the dough. Seperating. Shaping. Making..

The best days started if she'd say "go wash your hands." It meant I would get to help with the last batch of marzipan or glazings and icings. Gathering ingredients.  Mixing sugars and flavours. Maybe some dough rolling. Nothing too difficult. In the focus of the work we would chat idly about things that had nothing to do with cakes. We baked together and mixed our thoughts.

While I didn't think much of it then, those memories of working together are special now. Kneaded in you might say.

Twenty years later and now being a Dad with a severe disability I would sometimes feel guilty with my firstborn that I wasn't doing enough things with them. Sure we could play silly faces and read books and it was all going ok, but there was something missing too. The recipe worked well enough but something didn't taste quite right. 

Here comes Nom Nom Galaxy. A silly game I saw about soup factories in space. It sounded absolutely ridiculous but I had played other Pixeljunk games and their style was friendly but challenging. The trailer showed robots and fighting and automatic conveyor belts carrying things. All the right ingredients for a simulation game to me. So of course I bought it.

Your job in NomNom is simple. Collect tasty ingredients, turn them into delicious soup, launch the soup into space for distant species to enjoy. Aliens and local fauna, alongside rival corporations all try to interfere with this of course. You defend yourself and expand and automate. Sometimes the levels have a twist like half gravity, low oxygen or impassible terrain. Sometimes those hungry alien species got fed up of your soup and demanded special ingredients.

I'm over selling it. Its fun and zany but the game on its own might feel a bit bland or frustrating to some. So now we sprinkle in some of us from the outside.

A few minutes into the first planet my then 5-year old daughter arrives subtly on the sofa nearby. Watching curiously. I start to work through the tutorial. I place a home base. I pull up some grass from the ground. I build a soup machine. I build a rocket. She watches even more curiously. The soup appears from the machine in a cute little oversize can. I carry it to the rocket. It launches into space. The Aliens and We celebrate the event. She is really drawn in.

After that level she asks the inevitable, universal question:

"Can I play?"

At first I'm doubtful. 

"It might be too hard," I say, in a weak attempt to dissuade her. Naturally, thanks to the oblivious wit of a child, it backfires:

"I'll help you then! "

 I was right about the overall game. A lot was too hard for her on her own. 5 year olds don't generally weave together logic chains of automatic production lines, don't consider crop management or pest control. She couldn't get the conveyors to work and support automatons largely became dolls.

I was also wrong. She didn't need to do any of that. She was helping me. My thoughts trailed back to those bakery mornings.

 "Wash your hands. You can't make this dough," my mum said, "but you can grab that flour."

...

"Grab that controller."

Each time she got stuck, I gave my daughter things she could do: find some grass, hunt the angry sausage-cow-thingy, explore for parts, scout for supplies, bring me some robots!

Over a few months we work our way through various planets. It's a joy to make new soups and explore weird gravities and mush together our thoughts about all kinds of things. It was just like making cake. The flavour of the game was so much better as we had put both ourselves into the mix.

When barriers you face aren't visible you can kind of blur them out. Disability is not gone. It never is. There's a flow you can find though. Of just being. Without focusing on the limitations. This was the missing ingredient for me. I needed my own ways to have some memorable experiences with my children without the frustrations of weakness getting in the way. I've always felt that games do so much for people beyond just entertainment and Nom Nom is just an example. Eventually I'm sure we would have played something together anyway, but that game was the first and it will remain special.

Now with three children I still often have desperate pangs of not being physically able to support them sometimes but I also have found lots of creative solutions. Different recipes for feeling like a useful Dad.

I will always remember we didn't bake delicious cakes.

We made beautiful soups.