Christian games

There are few Christian games that are neither dull nor cheap. These ten were made for Holymeet and each tries to take the biblical image seriously instead of gluing a pious title onto a finished game. The Good Samaritan inverts the rule of its whole genre, because in it you do not dodge but stop, and stopping costs you your own progress. In Fishers of Men the net brings in people rather than fish, because that is what Peter was told. In Manna from Heaven you catch falling bread, because Israel in the desert received exactly what that day required.

The newer games are larger. David and Goliath is a sling with real physics: five smooth stones and a tower that collapses. Saint Michael is the war in heaven from Revelation, where you fire light and the ammunition is prayer. Road to the Shrine is a drive where you race the sun rather than another car, and every pilgrim you pick up slows you — so the decision of the game is how many you can afford to take. Two by Two pairs the animals before the water rises, Living Stones sets dressed stone into a wall after First Peter, and Catacombs is a maze where the lamp is the clock: the circle of light closes in as it burns, walked corridors stay in your memory, and you must find the grave signs before the dark shuts you in.

All are written as web games — they run in the browser on a phone and on a computer, need no store install and collect nothing about the player. They are controlled with one finger or the arrow keys, so a child and a grandmother can both play. Alongside them is a sudoku with Christian symbols, the only one that does not pretend to be biblical.

The games are the easiest way into the rest of Holymeet: behind them stand the prayer wall with virtual candles, mass times for 446 churches, the rosary, the Catholic calendar, the quiz and a community of people who live their faith rather than only read about it.