Early Access: Story Beats Part 2
Hey team,
My time, it's almost 12:30am. I'm really hoping this plan of mine, doing a Story Beats every week in March, isn't going to always involve a 10-14 hour crunch on Mondays. But, at any rate, the new video is done for you. This is the same version that will go public tomorrow (er... later today? Wednesday? when am I launching this thing?). This video is about Limbo and its unsettling use of game feel. It was fascinating watching this go from a ruddy mess into something I'm pretty OK with today. I guess that's one upside of working a long day.
Cheers,
-I
Comments (3)
Ian, have you played 140? It shares a developer with Limbo, and it was produced at the same time as it. It many, many ways, it's a deliberate inversion of Limbo's ideas, but a lot of the same ideas about game feel still come through. Juxtaposing the two games is pretty fascinating.
I *may* have played it for a hot minute at PAX East? Maybe not. I remember the trailers looking super slick but I feel like it just dropped off the radar after it came out. Work checking out, hm?
This is very thoughtful, I enjoyed it more than the last one (probably because I've actually played Limbo, I regret a bit not having played Dear Ester before watching the last one). I've come to notice, through your videos and others, that I'm very bad at examining the way the game mechanics marry to to the telling of a story, or the construction of a world, and I almost never think about the 'feel' even though certainly I do feel things. Watching videos on people who think about this a lot (I think you and Errant Signal are the main ones) is always kind of fascinating to me for this reason. I do remember the 'feel' of pulling those switches, and god, killing the spider is certainly a memorable moment, which I also almost viscerally remember the 'feel' over, even though I would not put Limbo in my top ten favorite or most evocative games. I'm glad for videos on these subjects though, since it's not a thing I'm likely to really put into my words myself even if I do experience it to some degree. And *in* my experience, lacking that language means I experience things less. Excited to see what you do for your other videos on this subject.