If you have not yet encountered Passage, don’t google it. Don’t go read reviews, don’t even read the comments to this post.
It only takes 5 minutes to play the game, and you would have spent that long reading. So just play it, and remember that you can explore up and down as well as left to right.
Here’s the Windows version
and the Mac version
and Unix source (SDL libraries required)
Try to beat my high score…1563
Then – and only then – read the creator’s statement, and play it again.
I’ll wait…
…
Congratulations, you have just experienced games as art. And now that you’ve played the game at least twice come discuss it in the comments, where I have left a more detailed and spoiler-filled reaction.