February 25, 2007
Time to Blow
Arthouse Games has gotten a sneak peek at the close-to-final version of Jonathan Blow’s Braid, and an interview with Blow. You might remember Braid from last year’s Indie Game Festival at GDC, where an early version won for Innovation, or from last month, when Blow was first to withdraw from Slamdance 2007 over the Super Columbine controversy, or maybe you remember him from the Experimental Gameplay Workshop (EGW) at GDC, which he organizes each year.
I missed GDC last year (had a newborn at home), so haven’t gotten a chance to play Braid, but it looks very innovative indeed — not your grandmother’s platformer. Looking forward to the final release.
Also intriguing is a new game Blow mentions that will be shown at this year’s EGW, by Rod Humble, VP of the Sims Studio at EA:
The Marriage… is 100% about expressing a complex theme through gameplay. The understanding conveyed by the game is very different from what you would get with words, or with pictures. It communicates to the audience in a way that is unique to games, and furthermore, that is different from what most game pundits have been describing as the communicative power of gameplay. The Marriage is a very simple game, but I think it’s a promising start.
March 13th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
[…] d Portal, looked incredible. Less incredible was Rod Humble’s The Marriage (blogged here) — I love abstraction, but this game was so abstract it totally required Humb […]
March 16th, 2007 at 4:20 am
it sounds like this game will kick my butt and take my coat