Posts Tagged ‘minimalist’
Increasingly, videogames are striving to imitate the unexplored worlds of human imagination — from barely-probed ocean depths to the stalward nebulae and distant stars of space simulations. The accuracy of recent attempts, however, is remained as far from the mark asd early scifi pulp magazines. More often than not, the ocean depths and voids of space are filled with life, pirates, battles, and immidiacy — immitations that do not depict the true nature of these depths: cold, lonely, enormous and terribly hostile. It's hard to communicate the experience of deep sea diving, or to imagine space flight. A few haunting releases — like Wholfin's video of an underwater squid birth — offer us clues.
Every so often I encounter a game that, in expressing beautiful art direction, stunning animation, and gorgeous visuals, comes across more as a cinematic and visual experience than as a gaming one. The latest release from Damp Gnat, Icycle, does precisely this. The game's premise is delightfully simple: the world has entered an ice age, and you alone inhabit it. You have nothing else to do but ride your bicycle in search of a friend.
