Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 268

A journey into videogame development hell shows a surprising human side

Broken games. Broken people.

In Defense of Tomorrowland

Brad Bird's ride-turned-spectacle points to a new way of talking about Disney. 

Viridi promises to capture the soothing art of potted plant care

When Ice Water Games launch Viridi later this summer, polygons will give way to carefully crafted stems, leaves, and petals, projecting out of the base of an equally pleasant pot of your choice. Flat yet strong colors, along with the feeling of lightness, achieved partially through an emphasis on pastels, will fill in the tender outlines of the agave, aloe, hens and chicks, echeveria, zebra cactus, and other varieties of greenery that you may choose to nurture.

The game aspires to serve as a therapeutic respite 

Viridi is a game about planting succulents, or thick, fleshy, water-retaining plants, and participating in and admiring their growth. It has been compared to Mountain in the way that it is also very much about enjoying the art that makes up the game. Kevin Maxon, the founding developer, isn’t quite comfortable with that comparison, though, and explains that the game is much more like a Tamagotchi, “though with a lot less nagging, and with the intention of fitting into a functioning adult’s life.” The game aspires to serve as a therapeutic respite from the never-ending emails, chaotic task boxes, and the ubiquitous ad assaults that consistently demand the majority of our screens and attention.

“We spend a lot of time on [social media] during our day-to-day lives giving ourselves distractions,” Maxon says. “We want to make Viridi an alternative place to go, either to alt+tab to when you need a break from your work, or to open on your phone when you're sitting in a waiting room. Viridi can live on your second monitor at work or in your pocket on the bus.”

Viridi’s latest trailer, which can be viewed above, features a smooth rotating camera that captures kind, silhouetted backdrops behind neat digital life forms, and soft beats that round out and complement the aesthetic. Zoe Vartanian, creative director on Viridi, points to Seattle-based artist Pam Wishbow and Grow Home as part of her visual inspiration deck.

Viridi also borrows from the team’s previous games, Eidolon and The Absence of Is, in its tempo and tone, and in its call to nature. But Viridi sets itself apart in how it communicates and interacts with the player. There is hardly any text; it’s mostly just you and your plant. The goal is to truly slow down, survey, digest, and enjoy an intimate relationship with new friends.

"it's ultimately an art piece.” 

Grace can be noted in how the game will allow players to ignore the plants for weeks without interaction. Of course, neglecting your plant will eventually lead to deterioration, while regular care promotes bloom and development. But while some consideration is given to the real world properties of the various forms of verdure, Viridi is designed to be more intuitive than it is a simulation. Maxon sums up, “Viridi acts somewhat like a real potted plant, but it's ultimately an art piece.”

Ice Water Games is still hard at work determining which features will make it into the final build. Remaining are choices about when to make new plants and pots available to the player and whether or not specific playthroughs will sync between multiple devices. "We really like the idea of people getting to try Viridi out for free, but we also found that including the plants as unlockable goals made the player focus on achieving those goals rather than caring for their current plants," says Maxon. For now, as this is all being worked out, we can enjoy some new vibrant visuals and sounds from the recently released trailer.

You can find out more about Viridi on its website.

The beautiful, crowded hell of Malebolgia

Imitation casts a long shadow.

Bloxels charts a course between physical and virtual game-making

The act of prototyping a game is a game in its own right. It involves the conceptualizing of space and the solving of puzzles. So why not just turn prototyping into a game?

the best of both worlds 

Bloxels, which is currently halfway to its fundraising goal on Kickstarter, takes this thought to its logical conclusion. It allows you to layout levels using blocks on a physical gameboard, photograph that board with your mobile device, and then turn that layout into a fully realized game. These games—or, more accurately, levels—can be shared with friends. Moreover, as a player passes through levels, she can unlock a greater array of game-creating tools. 

Of course, it is possible to develop a game in an entirely virtual environment, but there’s something to be said for physical heft. Therein lies the appeal of LEGO and games that started off as models, such as Lumino City. Bloxels lets you have the best of both worlds: a game about building blocks that, should you follow through, morphs into a virtual world. 

You can support Bloxels on Kickstarter.

A pixel artist renounces pixel art

The "pixel tax" comes to collect

Explore the dense world of Spirited Away in 8-bit theater

“I do believe in the power of story. I believe that stories have an important role to play in the formation of human beings, that they can stimulate, amaze and inspire their listeners.” - Hayao Miyazaki

The above quote could easily apply to any of the stories woven by Miyazaki and his animation studio, Studio Ghibli, which have been formative to so many people across the globe. Visual artists in particular have used the storyteller's colorful worlds to inform their own original work and tributes. From woodblock prints to art nouveau, artists have translated the Japanese filmmaker’s stories into other forms many times over. Recently, YouTube channel CineFix paid homage in a more modern style with its charming 8-bit version of Spirited Away. It is the latest installment in their 8-bit Cinema series that portrays the plots of popular films re-imagined as the low-res videogames that are as analogous with childhood as Miyazaki’s films.

the expansive universe of Miyazaki [...] is a natural fit for videogames. 

8-bit Cinema's portrayal of Miyazaki's magnum opus captures the hectic world of magic and spirits that he created almost fifteen years ago. A tiny Chihiro, the heroine of Spirited Away, side-scrolls through a world created with loving faithfulness to the original Oscar-winning movie. Each trial that Chihiro faces in Spirited Away becomes a mini-boss or a puzzle in its 8-bit iteration, and No Face is just as creepy as it chases Chihiro throughout the bath house. The frenzied soundtrack calls back to the stressful late-night boss battles of NES games as it pushes Chihiro along her epic journey, replaying the powerful themes of the original score.

In each Studio Ghibli film we are thrown into the midst of worlds that are both strange and familiar, left on our own to glean their politics and morals through the narrative much like we are in games. For Kill Screen’s film week, Gareth Martin wrote about the dense spaces of Studio Ghibli’s films and their game-like qualities. Likewise, Ni no Kuni showed that the expansive universe of Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli is a natural fit for videogames. Games allow us to spend hours exploring fictional universes in a way that no other art form allows. This 8-bit Cinema version of Spirited Away is so endearing because it alludes to that which all Miyazaki fans desperately crave: the chance to occupy those 2D spaces created by a visionary storyteller.  

A professor attached emoji to selfie sticks to help us combat vanity

Selfie sticks are extensions of a person’s power more than their arms. They are tools of conquest, a way for their owners to claim dominance over a larger swath of space in the name of better self-portraiture. If you frequently give in to the siren song of thinkpieces, you’ve seen this selfie shtick before. What you have not seen is Pablo Garcia’s antiquity-inspired solution to the selfie stick scourge.

An Assistant Professor in the Department of Contemporary Practices at the Art Institute of Chicago, Garcia found inspiration in the ancient Roman practice of handing out memento mori—reminders of death—to victorious generals. This practice, he explains in the accompanying video for his memento mori selfie stick, was meant to “reduce vainglory and self-importance.” Put otherwise, handing out skulls was a great way of taking generals down a peg.

Garcia has updated this technique for the 21st century, affixing the skull, poop, and thumbs-up emojis (are there any others?) to selfie-sticks. Since the selfie stick is an accoutrement designed with the sole purpose of highlighting its owner’s face, this required some doing. Garcia employed an anamorphic projection, printing paper graphics that would look stretched when viewed head-on but perfectly scaled from the iPhone’s haughty perch atop of the selfie stick.

"Remember (that you have) to die." 

Translated from Latin, memento mori means “remember (that you have) to die,” which is a slightly gloomier message than the one sent by Garcia’s apparatus. It does, however, embody the social function of this message. Much as skulls put generals in their place, emojis remind selfie stick owners that they are not that serious. Let it be noted that there is nothing wrong with using a selfie stick. It is a useful tool. But if you’re going to behave like something of a doofus, you might as well embrace the fact that you look like something of a doofus. Pablo Garcia has given the world a means of achieving that end. 

Turning the dreamlike spaces of King's Field into an exquisite corpse

Doubling down on the surreal.

Delta's meme-ified safety video signals the end of days (of sincerity)

Memes are to our generation are what boomboxes and Marty McFly's red vest are to the '80s. First, they become icons, encapsulating the pop culture of an entire era in just one image. Then they become camouflage for out of touch content-creators salivating over the coveted 18-29 demographic, as they cry, "IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT? ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!"

Delta Airlines' "Internetest safety video on the Internet" at first seems like just another case of tone-deaf-company-itis. But, in reality, its much more insidious than that. Featuring everyone from the screaming Taylor Swift goat to doge himself, the "safety video" reads more like a six minute-long wink to the camera. Since irony is as much a part of the millennial meme-factory as perms were to the shoulder-pad generation, Delta's video scoffs at itself even while participating in the very phenomenon it derides.

A disingenuous self-awareness underlies the whole thing, parodying a culture that already parodies itself—removing all substance from the words "humor," "iconography," and "safety video." At the end of it, you can click on a host of different interactive "paths;" each a kind of after-credits sequence, where internet celebs appear to cause a glitch in the online matrix, resulting in the whole video imploding inside its own vacuum of meaninglessness.

Weirdly enough, Delta's swing and miss safety video kind of mimics the issues GTA V experienced while attempting to satirize millennial culture. There's an inherent grossness to sarcastically recreating a culture that is self-admittedly empty. The age of internet irony gives us so many layers of meta to hide behind that we hardly ever even have to admit we have genuine thoughts and feelings to one other. As Christy Wampole of The New York Times describes it, life in the age of memedom turns into a "clutter of kitsch objects, an endless series of sarcastic jokes and pop references, a competition to see who can care the least."

"To live ironically is to hide in public" 

"To live ironically is to hide in public," Wampole concludes. "It is flagrantly indirect, a form of subterfuge, which means etymologically to 'secretly flee' (subter + fuge). Somehow, directness has become unbearable to us."

But the most horrifying part of it all is that it worked. Delta succeeded. Force-feeding the internet that derisive, hollow, insincere sludge it uses for fuel, Delta managed to play us all like fiddles. The video has appeared on the likes of Slate and Huffington Post, just so the outlets could make fun of something that's making fun of itself. I mean, its exactly what I'm doing right now—covering a story just to air my cynicism about it and the world we live in.

Listen, I'm no tinfoil-wearing, end of days truth teller who believes millennials are the worst generation to ever walk the planet. The current generation will always be the "worst" according to culture writers, and according to statistics, they'll also always be slightly better off than the ones before. Youth culture necessarily seems unintelligible, at least in retrospect.

But, at the same time, as I watched the Delta video, I couldn't help but feel a numbness spread throughout my body. Because this is how we will be remembered: as nonsensical fragments of insincerity. While girls in the '80s at least genuinely thought the side ponytails was awesome, our generation can't even muster the barest minimum of authenticity. Not even in our goddamn airplane safety videos.