As is occasionally the case, it can take a Flash game to  shake you out of a feeling of vague frustration when it comes to games. 

May I refer you to  a game called Time Goes By (Via Red Tower Games) which is strangely beautiful, the first stage in particular.

There are undeniably a couple of little frustrations with the game, but for the most part it has a wonderful feel to it that lifted me up ever so slightly.

There is often a question that gets bandied about various sites as to whether games can ever classify as art (Or as I have genuinely seen the question raised once “Is gamez art?”) and for the most part, we are stuffed into a general “not really” answer, but things like Time Goes By here are the sort of thing that raises the answer closer to a “sometimes they can”.