Jim Sterling is totally wrong, but we should think about what he said. It’s important. It’s a vocalisation – if not an entirely eloquent one – of the problem that a lot of players have with what they see as the typical “indie game”. Sterling calls The Path, seemingly his enemy number one, “pretentious”, “contradictory” and “unbearably dull” without pausing for breath. Maybe he’s right in some respects. It’s certainly easy to see why many would consider it pretentious. Though I’m not sure where he’s coming from with the second of those bugbears, the third could be true as well. Extended play can be dull as all hell, but as I outlined recently on another site, this doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

For those lost, here’s the offending article. If you haven’t already, read through it all; it’s a doozy. Our buddy Jim seems to be genuinely offended by these unnecessarily esoteric and intolerably arty-farty works. The word “bullshit” crops up three times, and “pretentious” no less than nine. To surmise his points, he believes that games including The Path (pictured right), The Marriage and The Void are, well, “totally fucking stupid“. His emphasis, not mine.

Sterling seems to argue from the premise that games should be a) straightforward and b) fun. The first point is drawn out into several paragraphs and by the time we reach the second it’s far overcooked. Citing a lack of direction in The Void, his King of Spades, he ponders; “Why can’t its characters speak plainly? Why does it want to introduce new gameplay ideas without giving us some sort of tangible idea about how the new ideas work?” I’ve just started playing The Void, and I had the same reaction. That initial rage, however, eventually subsides into a kind of blissful confusion. Ice Pick Lodge want us to stagger through perplexed and fascinated by the world and the mechanic and the abstract dialogue. Though discussing its more accidental deployment Pathologic, Lewis outlined this design virtue beautifully. It’s not deliberate in the way Sterling would have us believe. His impression was, to extrapolate a little, that this was done just because. It’s not designed to evoke emotions or inspire marvel, but to out-indie the next bunch of developers “living hand to mouth… working on their “art” in a basement somewhere in a bad part of town.”

At first, this made me sigh. Then it made me think. Maybe, just maybe, I’ve been guilty of this. I’m not a developer – plonk some code in front of my face and I wouldn’t have the first clue what to do with it – but I am a writer, a writer who has scribbled a lot of pretentious thoughts on a lot of pretentious games in the past year. David Jaffe would despise me. Sometimes, I have over-analysed. Sometimes it has probably been to look cool or, yes, feel self-important. What I’ve noticed, though, is that my thoughts and words have become more coherent, incisive and just plain right over that period. This also needs to happen to gaming and games writing in general. None of us are the finished article, least of all myself, but it’s part of the process that will eventually deliver more criticism and – far more importantly – more video games of substance.

[Continues...]

You might expect ACE Team to work from some sort of colourful crazy house, the walls painted with vibrant, dreamlike murals.

They don’t. They work in a small, modest office in Santiago, Chile – an eight-strong independent studio who invested everything in their debut project, Zeno Clash. It’s a good job they did. The Source Engine-powered fighting game proved to be one of the most exciting and creative releases of 2009.

“It was born from an older project, which we started developing some years before ACE Team was formed as a professional studio,” explains Andres Bordeu, one of the company’s pair of lead designers. The other is his twin, Carlos, with a third brother, Edmundo, working as Art Director: the A., C. and E of the Team. “At that time, we were granted a demo license of the Lithtech Jupiter System – the same engine used by Monolith’s No One Lives Forever 2 – with which our team tried to create a game called Zenozoik. The goal of this project was to create an action RPG in first-person, but the prototype never took off, mainly because we tried to create something too ambitious for a small studio.”

How, then, did Zeno Clash’s wondrous world come into existence? Its vivid alien landscapes and outlandish character designs are a far cry from most of today’s mainstream releases. In Zeno Clash, the environment feels like part of an enormous, existing culture, of which we’re only seeing a tiny speck. In other words, Zenozoik must have been very ambitious indeed, because Zeno Clash is about as big and bold as indie games come.

“Many years after the development of the prototype, we gathered around our original concept and re-thought the game in a manner that it would focus on few but solid elements that we would be able to produce as a small team,” Andres Bordeu continues. “Our vision had to nail two key elements: the surreal, novel art style and the intense combat in first-person perspective. We needed to scrap all the RPG elements and scale down the game to something that would end up being like a fantasy Double Dragon shooter – a very unusual mix. We knew that we were too few to make a game with large, open and expansive environments, so scaling down the concept of the game was crucial.”

OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY
There was an era when wildly inventive world design ruled. Throughout the 90s, studios experimented with a variety of styles. As the new millennium rolled around, and with it advanced engine technology, these worlds began to shine in a way no one had ever thought possible. The rolling hills of Giants: Citizen Kabuto or the striking otherworldliness of Sacrifice impressed players around the world.

Of course, these games were never in the mainstream. But even iD Software’s early work on the Quake series, Naughty Dog’s insane Crash Bandicoot titles and the legendary Grim Fandango had wowed on a wider scale. Now, it seems as though this creativity is fading, making way for yet another science-fiction romp, or the gritty battlefields of a real-life war.

While Bordeu thinks more grounded, realistic world design can still feature great art, he has noticed a decline in novel videogame settings. “I think it has to do with the avoidance of risk,” he says. “Videogames are consistently getting bigger and more expensive to produce, so for a publisher to develop a title backed up by a known IP or traditional theme would seem the safest bet. Many of today’s games seem to look at competitive titles or related media – like blockbuster movies – when looking for sources of inspiration. You can tell that Star Wars, Alien and war-themed movies are a common source of inspiration for many shooters, or other games from different genres.”

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Format: PC | Genre: Action-adventure | Publisher: Mamba | Developer: Ice-Pick Lodge | Release date: 16/10/09 | RRP: £19.99

By Lewis Denby

I’m almost tempted to hold this review for a while and start The Void again.

This is about as opaque as games get.  Having played for somewhere in the region of 15 to 20 hours, I’m still not entirely sure what I think.  I’m also stuck, having foolishly kept only a single save slot, to the point where I’ve found myself unable to continue.  So there’s a caveat here: I haven’t actually finished the game. I’d have liked to. But time’s ticking on, and the atmosphere’s so stifling and completely unwelcoming that, quite frankly, I’m ready for a break.

That in mind, it’s worth treading with caution.  This is by no means the definitive word on The Void.  In an ideal world, there wouldn’t really be a review at all, and we’d go with a more abstract thought-piece on the various themes of the game, and how they feed through to the player.  But there’ll be time for that later – and I expect the niche market The Void is aimed at will spend many hours doing just that.  For now, there’s still plenty to talk about.  So let’s talk.

//Sibling rivalry
Colour is everything.  In the Void, a twisted dimension between the living and the dead, every inch of life and society is governed by Colour.  It’s a scarce resource, rapidly draining from this monochrome world, and you have the power to manipulate it.

In a more tangible sense, it’s your health.  It’s also the closest you’ll come to ammunition, and to currency, and to skill attributes.  You store it in a variety of hearts, collected throughout the game, and it allows you access to a number of different streights and powers, shaping how you interact with the world.  You can grow it, harvest it, fight with it, or donate it to the Sisters, who’ll grant you entry into new areas of the Void in return.  The Brothers, a collective of overseers who maintain the balance and authority of the world, insist you steer clear of the Sisters altogether, on pain of instant death.

The Void revolves around the struggle between the Brothers, the Sisters, and yourself.  The Sisters are weak, vulnerable, yet seductive and manipulative creatures, who float around in the nude, covered in flowers and glowing auras.  The Brothers are utterly terrifying hulks of flesh and metal, giant and hideous.  The Sisters beg for your help.  The Brothers can’t decide whether you’re a saviour or the worst threat imaginable.  For a good chunk of the game, you’re none the wiser yourself.

The tension between these character groups is fascinating.  The Void exudes a real socio-political charisma from the very opening of the game.  The Brothers may spend their lives (deaths?) instilling fear on the inhabitants of the Void, but they’re strangely afraid themselves.  They’re terrified you’re there to remove them from power.  So they bargain with you, set you tasks, order you to fulfil their wishes.  The Sisters agree to help you rid the place of their presence, but you’ll have to feed their Colour addiction first.  No one’s entirely sure who you are or why you’re there, and everybody is suspicious.  Everybody tries to use you to their own advantage.

There are plenty of themes here that continue from Ice-Pick Lodge’s last game, Pathologic.  This omnipresent suspicion is one of them.  Lies, threats, social hierarchy, existentialism and the harsh reality of surviving in an alien world – they’re all here in The Void.  The survival mechanic is particularly interesting, and hugely suffocating.  For every second that ticks by in this place, your Colour drains away.  Reach zero, and you die completely, falling from the Void and into the unknown depths below.

Pathologic, an obscurist action-RPG set in a fantasised, early 20th Century Russian town, showcased some oustanding creativity.  In many ways, though a different breed of game, The Void feels like the natural evolution of Pathologic’s design.  Aesthetically, it’s marvellous.  Vast, barren wasteland twists and contorts unfathomably; trees of Colour sprout emphatically into the black sky; indoor areas are decorated with symbols of life and death.  A nauseating, hypnotic soundtrack holds it all together with impressively dark aplomb.  Though the engine’s technically a fair few steps behind the pack, this is a game with tremendous vision.  This is the world that often seemed desperate to burst out of Pathologic’s decaying walls, and it’s as brutally beautiful as anyone could have hoped.

[Continues...]