I've spent only a short time with it, but the charming art style is a big reason I feel so connected to the game. Similarly, Modnation Racers brings a vinyl art twist to the tactile concept, but in service of a game with problems under the hood.Īnd finally (for now), we have Ilomilo, an utterly cuddly puzzle game I'm enjoying to the hilt, despite my ineptitude with spatial puzzlers. I lost interest in the repetitive gameplay fairly soon, but messing around with the physics in its cushy, whimsical pastures kept me playing longer that I otherwise might have. These elements fuse brilliantly with the game's mechanics, so leaping to grab a piece of string can help you reach a higher platform.or unravel an enemy.įlock, a thin but charming sandbox puzzler from last year, illustrates how this design aesthetic can elevate an otherwise shallow gaming experience. Kirby navigates a world made entirely of fabric, buttons, zippers, yarn, and string. The most cohesive application of tactile art design is also my latest gaming obsession: Kirby's Epic Yarn. Starship Mario in SMG 2 looks like a giant plush toy begging to be hugged. The Black Hole planet is made of dirt and stone Pear Planet and the Tropic Planets appear to be covered in felt.
Super Mario Galaxy takes a more cartoonish approach, but many of its levels appear to be upholstered in plush canvas with soft features. Little Big Planet remains the touchstone for this tactile art style, with its levels and building materials made of paper, cardboard, wood, sponge, and stone. More recently, we're seeing a spate of games with visual designs inspired by textiles and natural-world elements. This analogue texture look requires serious digital horsepower, and Rare was among the first console developers to exploit the dynamic shadowing, colored lighting, and long draw distance necessary to pull it off. I trace this tactile visual style in games back to Pikmin, but we can find precursors in games like Conker's Bad Fur Day (N64) and Viva Piñata (Xbox), both developed by Rare. The simplest activity, like pulling open a zipper in Kirby's Epic Yarn, feels something akin to eating a warm chocolate chip cookie. There's something comforting about inhabiting a world I want to touch and squeeze and roll around in. Our persistently-online existence - with our faces buried in digital devices and social interactions mediated by screens - makes us hungry to reconnect with soft, curvy, analogue things. Wearing my amateur social scientist hat, it all makes sense. We want to re-connect with real-world things. Ive on furlough and bring in Captain Kangaroo. So if we've already reached that techno-future (warp-speed and transporters aside), how does technology feed our wish-fulfillment now? Easy. iPad) decked out in Star Trek's futuristic LCARS UI. Heck, if I were the Captain of anything, I could record my Captain's Log on my tablet computer (i.e. I mean, who needs a separate Tricorder and Communicator when an iPhone functions as both?
We now live in the computer-centric future Star Trek imagined, but with even cooler gadgets. In my own lifetime, this streamlined aesthetic extends from the Starship Enterprise to the iPad, and it's only logical to note that Jonathan Ive was conceived at roughly the same time NBC aired the first episode of Star Trek, the original series. Technology, we dreamed, would deliver us a touchscreen-controlled, voice-activated world in which humans harness technology, build a peaceful world, and look fabulous doing it. When I was a kid the future looked like this.
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