“Fossils are aesthetically beautiful, and I love them for being physical reminders of the long history of life on this planet. Holding them makes me feel connected to the past.”
These are the words of Brady Soglin, whose boyhood love for fossils took him to places ranging from Mazon Creek, a swampland sixty miles from his native Chicago, to Solnhofen, a Bavarian geological hotspot. A long-term hobby, he intertwined it with another – creating games – to form PC puzzler Fossil Corner, my favourite chill hidden gem of 2021. There’s much I like about the game, and much that piqued my interest, so I decided to delve into Fossil Corner and its origins by interviewing its spectacled, bearded, bald twentysomething solo developer/publisher. Why make a game about fossils anyway?
“I wanted to make a game that was about a person who was very interested in something that was niche,” Soglin tells me over Google Meets. “Someone focusing very hard on something that most people would be like ‘huh like why do you care so much about [this]’.”
Fossil Corner sees you as a retired palaeontologist ‘processing a crisis of faith’. You spurn a cruise ship getaway to continue doing what you love, which is using your shed to collect fossils. The puzzles come in the form of boxes. Open up a box and as soon as up to 12 fossils are poured onto a multi-coloured canvas, you need to sort and form links between them to construct a family tree (or trees). Links are made between pairs that have a sole characteristic ‘trait’ change, like a fossil adding features or mirroring, and after all is linked you’ll receive a monetary reward, as well as a pick of any member from the set to add to your collection. Most boxes will be littered with tat, much like real life I’m told (a lot of ‘poop’ to be found), but finding that one shiny in a box can make your day.