Viewing entries tagged
dystopian
Not long after I'd finished playing Stray, someone asked me if it was any good, with the implication being that this was nothing more than a meme. It's no surprise that any game featuring a cat as its main character would garner a lot of internet attention, but I tend to stay away from those kinds of things and hadn't seen a single meme during my time with the game. Thankfully I was able to respond with the clarification that this is indeed, more than just a meme.
Walking the line between esoteric art and nonsensical elitism can often be the downfall of a good idea, as the latter prevents large parts of the audience from connecting with your message. In narrative-heavy games, there is always a need for the player to understand what's happening along the way, but being too obvious is boring, while complete abstraction tends to be confusing and pointless. Suffice to say that there's an art to telling a story that pulls in the player, but doesn’t beat them over the head with a bland message.
Sometimes a game comes along that you've never heard about, but thanks to its strong aesthetic and firm genre, you wonder how you could ever have let it pass you by. I love experiencing creations without any expectations or preconceptions, and when they turn out to be the kind of creation you've spent a long time looking for, the satisfaction could not be more palpable.
There are some developers who always pique my interest thanks to their track record and Remedy Entertainment are no exception. While some studios can be known for a franchise or a singular gimmick, Remedy have what I like to call a recognisable signature to their games. As with other developers of their calibre, this underlying style manages to go a whole lot further than a franchise or mascot ever could.
Immersion often seems like the holy grail of game design, as it's often seen as the key to a player's overall enjoyment. It's why so much effort is put into input methods and fancy new controllers with motions sensors and vibrating functions. The more a game can draw us into its world and make us believe what we're seeing, the better, but there's one type of game that needs nothing more than a player sitting at a computer.
How do you take a familiar game concept and turn it around to be something original and unique? Then again, how do you make this new iteration something interesting and compelling, or is it enough to be different? These questions and more will be raised when anyone dives into Vertiginous Golf.
