Limbo

3 comments on Hacker News

1. Positivejayjay71Sep 8, 2016

   I think The Stanley Parable is a much better example of an artistic experience. The creator made another game called The Beginner's Guide which I thought was just as good.

   Limbo, Papers Please, I Am Bread, Please Don't Touch Anything, are all good examples of games I would also consider art. These games are genuinely different and many of them are considered incredibly enjoyable by most people.

   If you want something which really is just art and not much of a game, The Cat And The Coup is free on Steam. Frog Fractions 2 is also free and you can find it using Google (you have to play the whole game to understand).

   For the most part I think gamers and developers are a bit sensitive about their medium, trying to argue it's "art" because it has a positive connotation. I think they should just enjoy it for what it is, as most games are designed to be fun instead of something else. That said, I think VR might try to change this. A friend of mine at Oculus mentioned how it's the very early stages, comparing VR to movies from ~100 years ago. Back then they just filmed plays, as they didn't realize what they could do with the medium. I'm sure VR will have lots of typical blockbusters following generic formulas, but I think indie developers (of which there are more every day) will build some pretty incredibly stuff in the coming years.

2. NeutralmjnAug 21, 2014

   Significantly lower cost of living, or better sources of early-stage funding. Some countries have started including games in their arts or film funding, which can be a viable source of initial funds (especially in countries where the arts funding is fairly large, relative to population).

   A lot of our students (I teach in a game program in Denmark) pay for the first 3-12 months of their indie studios that way. Those are typically $15k initial grants, and a possibility of around $100k-$200k follow-on funding towards production, if they're convinced it's worth funding at more than the seed level. Obviously that's not going to pay for an AAA game, but it gives indie developers some runway. The early funding for Playdead's Limbo [1] was through that route, for example, and then they sought commercial investors later. Here are this year's recipients: http://www.dfi.dk/Branche_og_stoette/Spilordningen/stoettede-spil-foraar-2014.aspx

   [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_(video_game)

3. Positiveja2keJun 29, 2011

   I don't think the gritty/old timey look is bad, but I think you could push it further to sell it as such. I think you could go a long way by adding SOME saturation back into the world, and tinting things a bit sepia for an aged look. I'd still leave the bullseyes full saturation, though, as they really do pop right now. If you want to keep things feeling deliberately old timey and worn, adding a little bit of aged film overlay would go a long way (some decent examples of this type of aging, though fully black and white instead of just partially desaturated, can be seen in the games PB Winterbottom or Limbo).

   Out of curiosity, what led to the bullseyes being spherical instead of cylindrical?

   -- PB Winterbottom http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMZyAsVlMoU#t=1m10s

   Limbo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCA79zPaQe0#t=30s

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   Edit: I got distracted for a bit but here's a moderately quick mockup of some of those ideas:

   http://www.meltwizard.com/stuff/factory.png

   You could make people "feel" the gyroscopic movement even more by having the UI's movement be slightly delayed from the player movement, like it's following behind on a rubber band (see: first person games which have helmet art, like Metroid Prime on the gamecube). You wouldn't want to make it too crazy since it has to be usable, but adding a little feeling of sway to the surrounding chrome, tied to gyroscope moves, would probably go a long way towards making it feel less mechanical and more fluid.

   Sorry for the armchair art direction by the way. If I am accidentally coming across as an asshole, please know that it is not intentional! I like the concept for the game AND for the visual direction and it made me interested enough to crack open Photoshop and start playing around. I don't know if my ideas are particularly noteworthy or if they actually manage to improve anything, but it's what came to mind when looking at the game. Hopefully no offense is taken!