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CosmonauticJoe's Botanicula (PC)
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| [September 10, 2012 11:02:16 AM]
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I was pleased to find out last semester that Amanitas Studios, creators of the charming and intelligent 'Machinarium,' had come out with a new adventure. It's called Botanicula, and it is a splendorous, playful, ultra-creative offering that takes itself seriously enough to be considered art, but nowhere near serious enough to ever be boring, pretentious, or anything other than delightful.
The first twist it does on the standard adventure game format is that you're a team of characters, all huddled up and following along with one another, instead of a single person. Your team is made up of little tree creatures who are looking to save their giant tree from an attack by evil, light-stealing spiders. As in Machinarium, there is no actual dialogue--the narrative works through characters mumbling certain sounds, and thought bubbles appearing over their heads that have pictures conveying the plot. It's charming. There's an old wise man character (several of them, I think) that mumble what sounds like archaic Japanese noises and tell the story of how the great trees have been attacked by the spiders. The sound effects seem to all have been done in house, with squeals and shrieks coming from what sound like designers and programmers having way too much fun. None of the puzzles are very hard, but all of them are cute and have their own ingenuity. And that's really what's most striking about Botanicula--at every turn, the designers seem to have been engaged in a creative improvisation, coming up with whatever fun looking creatures and events they felt like, and enjoying themselves along the way. This really taught me something about game design, and had me thinking on creativity in general. It seems much more fun to just wing something--not having too much of it planned out in advance--and then just trusting yourself to be free to make whatever you want. How else can you come up with spoiled little acorn-looking children playing tennis with your characters, or 23 chickens running wild, that you must find in order to power a blimp that can take you off a tree branch? After playing Botanicula I was inspired to work on my own games similarly, inventing as I go along and not worrying about results so much as just having fun.
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CosmonauticJoe's Botanicula (PC)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Monday 10 September, 2012
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