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30 Jan 2007 : Crazy Czech Adventures #
One of the big attractions of computer games for me is the brilliant use of graphics that they routinely incorporate, and I often think that they're one of the best ways (both as a medium and as a commercially viable proposition) to be able to create beautiful things. 
However, in spite of this it's not often that I am totally awestruck by the beauty and atmosphere of a game. There are only two recent games that I can think of that have had what I consider to be a quite profound beauty. The first is Samorost, or more accurately, Samorost 2 which I discovered first, created by Amanita Design. The second, which I only stumbled across over the weekend in spite of the fact that it's a good few months old, is called Gumboy Crazy Adventures, by Cinemax. 
You'd not expect something with a title that includes the words gum and crazy to inspire beautiful imagery, but it has the same magical, whimsical, and fantastical atmosphere that I found so beautiful in Samorost. Although the graphics and sound - which form a major part of the beauty - are similar between the two games, the gameplay differs greatly between them. Luckily, they're also both great fun to play. Both Cinemax and Amanita Design are based in the Czech Republic. The combination of eerie sound and music, incomprehensible speech, and graphics that integrate real rustic objects is very unusual to me, and I wonder if it's something that's grown out of traditional East European art. Given how much I seem to enjoy it, this is something I probably ought to look into more deeply.
However, in spite of this it's not often that I am totally awestruck by the beauty and atmosphere of a game. There are only two recent games that I can think of that have had what I consider to be a quite profound beauty. The first is Samorost, or more accurately, Samorost 2 which I discovered first, created by Amanita Design. The second, which I only stumbled across over the weekend in spite of the fact that it's a good few months old, is called Gumboy Crazy Adventures, by Cinemax. You'd not expect something with a title that includes the words gum and crazy to inspire beautiful imagery, but it has the same magical, whimsical, and fantastical atmosphere that I found so beautiful in Samorost. Although the graphics and sound - which form a major part of the beauty - are similar between the two games, the gameplay differs greatly between them. Luckily, they're also both great fun to play. Both Cinemax and Amanita Design are based in the Czech Republic. The combination of eerie sound and music, incomprehensible speech, and graphics that integrate real rustic objects is very unusual to me, and I wonder if it's something that's grown out of traditional East European art. Given how much I seem to enjoy it, this is something I probably ought to look into more deeply.