A Whole New World

ACE Team is an independent studio, so the lack of publishers willing to take a risk was never an issue. The game was originally distributed only via Steam, a service owned and run by Valve Software, renowned for the support they provide to smaller development houses. So this afforded the team a chance to create something wildly creative, something that would exist far outside the restrictions imposed on most studios.

But what drove them to create such an extravagant, alien place? “Our decision to create a punk fantasy world was because of a personal interest of the team,” says Bordeu, “but also because we wanted to stand out through innovation. The punk fantasy theme was a great way to stand apart from other titles, because it doesn’t make a reference to traditional media. It was also considerably more reasonable for a small company like ours to focus on the artistic qualities of the graphics, instead of the technical qualities.”

INTO THE VOID
The creative forces of ACE Team aren’t the only ones to have been experimenting with world design lately. Another small developer, Russia’s Ice-Pick Lodge, made a name for itself with the surreal adventure Pathologic, and the team recently cemented themselves as visionary creators through their critically acclaimed, abstract resource-management game The Void. Pathologic takes place in an isolated town in which the architecture, as well as the population, succumbs to a terrible disease. The events of The Void unfold in a dark afterlife, inhabited by artistic nudes and terrible mechanical beasts, and where the world twists and contorts in an uncomfortable, unfamiliar way.

The Void is the more immediately striking of the two. But Pathologic’s world holds its own. A staircase, sans supports, bends up into the sky, leading to nothing but the heavens. The Polyhedron is a huge, skyscraping tower standing upright on a point, a physically impossible structure that, when you get close enough, you realise is constructed out of paper blueprints. An enormous, domed abbatoir sits on the edge of the town, as the buildings bleed into the sandy Steppe. As the days go on, and the disease takes over, the sky darkens, the fog thickens, and the buildings themselves become blistered and worn.

“The town in Pathologic is a metaphor,” explains Ice-Pick’s CEO, Nikolay Dybowski. “It’s a model of the world. The history of humanity, several different social structures and ways of life are encoded in it. The Steppe and the abattoir are the prehistoric reality – the realm of the myth. The town itself is a representation of normal, civilized living, while the Polyhedron is the realm of a utopia, a realised pursuit of a dream.”

The way Pathologic’s look subtly changes throughout its 12 in-game days is a rare delight in first-person videogames, and an idea that could have some mileage in other products. “This simply seemed like obvious artistic imagery,” says Dybowski. “The disease is the image of an absolute evil – it must look disgusting. However, we didn’t want to achieve this by crippling or mutilating characters, or by showing guts and blood.

“The town of Pathologic is itself a living being,” he explains. “The town is the central character of the game. We wanted to show that the horrible disease, the Sand Plague, affects not just the people, but mostly their creation – a utopian town. Yes, you feel sorry for the dying people, but their lives are insignificant in comparison to the existence of a unique socium that was miraculously born despite all the laws of nature.”

Pathologic merges its story and visual design so seamlessly that it’s rarely anything but impressive, despite some of the title’s noted shortcomings. But much of the game’s look came from Ice Pick’s original desire to create a more traditional survival horror game. “We were sure almost until the very end that the game should first scare the player, and then deliver the storyline,” explains Dybowski. “But after we played the second and especially third parts of Silent Hill, we understood that it would be meaningless to compete with that series. But the ominous blobs on buildings made it into the final release – else, the faceless and invisible disease completely disappeared from the player’s sight, and became difficult to take seriously.”

[Continues...]

Pages: 1 2 3