video games

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Animation Design Illustration

GRIS: Explore a Surreal Watercolor Landscape in a New Video Game by Nomada Studio

GRIS is an new video game designed by Nomada Studio that leads users through a surreal landscape filled with crimson mountains, square trees, and overgrown ruins. There is no danger or death in the detailed watercolor world, but rather the opportunity for meditative exploration with the main character as she unlocks new worlds and abilities. The video game features an original score, which perfectly matches the tone of its soft, gestural graphics, created by Nomada Studio partner Conrad Roset.

The game design mimics the way watercolor pools on paper, with splotches of color often falling outside of the lines in the main character’s face or the hills she slides down or leaps over. “In our game the scenery is very important, and sometimes takes the spotlight over the main character,” says the studio.

GRIS is the first video game by the Barcelona-based Nomada studio, and will be released this December for both Nintendo Switch and PC. You can watch a demo of the indie game in the video by IGN below. (via Creative Review)

Photography

Photos of Animals Retouched to Look Like Real-Life Minecraft Creatures

Jakarta-based designer and retoucher Aditya Aryanto posed the question: what would the blocky digital creatures in Minecraft look like if they actually walked the Earth? The result is a totally absurd series of retouched photographs titled Minecraft in Real Life. Aryanto snagged several royalty-free images from Pixabay and Unsplash and Photoshopped them into the familiar cubic beings. You can see more from the series on Behance.

 

Art Design Illustration

An Immersive World of Visual Storytelling and Puzzle Solving in ‘Samorost 3’

Prague-based Amanita Design, creators of the award-winning Mechinarium, recently released what may be their best game yet: Samorost 3. This deeply immersive puzzle game spans the ecosystems of 9 unusual planets as you encounter strange inhabitants and unlock increasingly complex secrets to advance to the next level. Amanita Design’s approach to creating completely non-verbal/non-textual games relies heavily on intuition, sound design, and symbolism to create environments that are practically interactive artworks. Samorost 3 is a long-awaited sequel in a series of first released in 2003 and 2005.

The music and sound design specifically are fantastic, and Amita provides all kinds of behind-the-scenes videos showing how they developed the quirky voices for each character and composed the accompanying soundtrack. I’ve only been playing for about two hours or so, but this game is truly wonderful. You can get it from the Apple App Store or download it from their website for your desktops.

Craft Design

New Winged Insects Constructed from Video Game and Computer Components

Before old circuit boards find their way to the landfill, Portsmouth, UK-based artist Julie Alice Chappell gives them new life as winged insects. Tearing the boards from old computers and video game systems she cuts and sculpts them into crawly creatures that resemble butterflies, dragonflies and even cockroaches. The upcycled bugs are further adorned with other electrical components that form various appendages. Each piece is one-of-a-kind and she sells them through her Etsy shop.

Art Design

INKS: Paintball Meets Pinball in a New Videogame from State of Play

For their latest video game INKS, London-based State of Play Games have created a new spin on classic pinball by turning the background of a pinball game into a piece of interactive art. As the ball traverses the course, the bright lights and clanking sounds of traditional pinball are replaced with pockets of watercolor paint that explode into flourishes. The ball in turn leaves trails of color as you solve each level.

State of Play are no strangers to turning a more tactile world into a digital game. You might remember their groundbreaking work in Lumino City (which won a BAFTA award) where real paper sets and characters were filmed and photographed as components of an immersive digital puzzle game. INKS has much of the same polish a detail, though allows for quicker gameplay. One of my favorite details is that every time you complete a level, the game board complete with paint trails is saved as a thumbnail like an artwork. You can even print and share them.

Inspired by artists like Miro, Matisse, Jackson Pollock and Bridget Riley, each table becomes a unique work of art in its own right, sculpted by the player as they fire an ink covered ball around the canvas. The player is encouraged to share their final work of art on social media with the iOS share function. They can even print them out if they like – with the story of their perfect game literally drawn on the canvas in front of them, something to be proud of and share.

Luke Whittaker from State of Play tells us they were partly inspired by Sam van Doom’s ink-based pinball game from 2012. It’s a visually stunning game with some pretty innovative ideas, even if you don’t particularly enjoy pinball. You can download INKS for iOS here.

Art

A Playable Version of Pong Set Inside a Piet Mondrian Painting

Over at digital arts community B3ta, a user challenged others to create images of fake video games based off of famous artworks. The results are pretty phenomenal, but one user who goes by HappyToast envisioned a version of Pong set inside a Piet Mondrian painting. After seeing the GIF, designer Kristiana Hansen instantly set out to program the real thing. So here you have it: 2 player MondriPong 1.2. (via BoingBoing)