Art game Awakening, bullets flying sideways beware of being eliminated

Guide: For small game developers, the art of making it easier for them to stay in the gaming industry. They don't have the manpower, the time and the money to create games that match the image quality of Call of duty, which is expensive to develop and has a production team of up to hundreds of people.
The Water palace is like a painting placed on the Green Lake. The gray pillars of stone were staggered to support each other, and the Pink Palace Dome pointed to the sky. On the platform beside the pillar, a crow is watching the lonely princess.

The princess passed through the illusion of the Maze building, arrived in the air suspended in the Penrose triangle (Penrose triangle). This is the artist m.c Escher's painting "Waterfall", the shape of the angular lines in the real world can not exist. However, the rules of the real world do not apply to the video game "Monument Valley" (Monument Valley).

"Monument Valley" by the UsTwo game studio for smartphones and tablet computer users design, the purpose of the design is to enable players to play the game while also able to enjoy the picture.

"We've developed it as an intellectual game, but it's also done in graphic design," said Neil McFarland, director of UsTwo's game studio. "No matter where the player goes, as long as they want to take a snapshot, the snapshot will reach the standard of the poster, the player can print out the snapshot and paste it on the wall." ”

UsTwo even provides a button that allows players to take screenshots and save them to their smartphone photo gallery at any time.

For small game developers, the art of making it easier for them to build a foothold in the gaming industry. They don't have the manpower, the time and the money to create games that match the image quality of Call of duty, which is expensive to develop and has a production team of up to hundreds of people. As a result, developers like UsTwo focus on developing a game with a unique visual experience.

The Monument Valley, launched in April this year, comes from 8 developers and designers, thanks to its fantasy-style images, changing color styles, and simple geometric compositions, which sell a total of 1.4 million copies. In the past few years, this kind of ingenuity, full of creative games to attract the attention of specific people, in the sale of a certain degree of success.

"Bassin" (Bastion) from the Super Giant game (supergiant Games) tells the story of an environment in which there is a strong color contrast, drawn by artist Jean Chi (Jen Zee). Playdead's "The Edge of Hell" (Limbo), through the black and gray tones, presents a kind of horror atmosphere. Developer Honeyslug, who teamed up with British artist Richard Hogg Richard Hogg, launched Hohokum, showing a group of colorful creatures riding on a snake-like kite and flying in a dreamy world.

The unique style makes these games stand out from the fierce competition. The game industry is currently the world's fastest growing momentum, but also one of the most competitive industries. According to statistics, about 1.2 billion people are playing games through mainframe, PC and mobile devices, they account for 75% of the total number of Internet users. According to DFC FDI, a market-research firm, sales of gaming software worldwide will reach $100 billion trillion by 2018, up 59% from current levels.

Getting user attention is the most important and basic condition for a long-term foothold in the gaming industry.

"There are hundreds of thousands of small-scale game studios in the world," said Lewis Ward, an analyst at IDC, a market research firm, Lewis Wade. "Most of them will be defeated, and 99% of these studios have never been the same." ”

Game developers can publish in the smartphone market and can now even do so on the console platform, so "the type of game is basically endless, and getting people's attention is a big challenge," Ward said.

Sometimes the game is developed by an artist and a programmer, such as Jonathan Boulos (Jonathan Blow). The developer borrowed 40,000 dollars and developed a popular jigsaw puzzle called "Braid", which has a total budget of 200,000 dollars, mostly paid to comic artist David Herman (David Hellman). The final return of the investment to the Bois also earned a profit. He now has a team that is developing a game called "The Witness" for Sony PlayStation 4.

Developer Thatgamecompany in 2012 launched the game "groceries", which was released by Sony, only to provide players 3 hours long game, the price of 15 U.S. dollars. The game, developed by a 18-member team, has become the fastest-selling PlayStation downloadable game on the online market, even winning the Grammy Awards. Its painting is influenced by the Japanese Zen Garden and tells a story about the journey to distant mountains.

Video games not just bullets flying horizontal art games are rising
"The game is well worth a lot of players from scratch," Brendan Osting Brendan Austin, a nonprofit research expert from Austin, Texas. "The experience of the game is like watching a painting or watching a movie." ”

The game is not like the medieval fantasy epic "Ancient Scrolls 5: The Sky" as the exquisite performance of the picture, Austin said he has been playing "groceries" in the past few years, more than anyone to invest. He feels that "groceries" is a good example of a game style with less entertainment and more artistry. ”

Capybara Games is making a mobile game, and the Toronto developer is "passionate" about visual expression, said company President Nessen Villa. The company's popular work was launched in 2011 on the iphone and ipad, known as "Superbrothers:sword and Sworcery EP", by the retro pixel art to present the game footage from Cregg Adams (Craig Adams) Hand. Adams, founder of design company Superbrothers, met at a meeting with Aston Villa in 2009.

The game, which was completed by two people, cost $4.99 and sold 1.5 million copies as of July 2013.

After the success of the Superbrothers, the Capybara game worked with Microsoft to develop an action game called "Below", which will be exclusive by Xbox One. In this game, the player manipulates a small warrior by looking down, and the game blurs parts of the screen with visual effects, trying to better enable the player to focus on the warrior.

Video games not just bullets flying horizontal art games are rising
"The character you're manipulating is so small that it hangs off," Villa said. This setting allows you to experience the feeling of being surrounded by the unknown. ”

"It's not just about producing something that looks good, we want to convey the feeling that a player needs to face by tone and atmosphere," says Vera.

For McFarlane and UsTwo, the art of the game focuses more on hue and atmosphere, and they try to prove that there is room for such games on any platform.

UsTwo's next game is a virtual reality works, called Land's End, and the "Monument Valley" style is very different, but the visual philosophy is the same. The team is currently employed by Samsung, who is determined to build its own exclusive game of the upcoming virtual reality head-wear device, which will be launched later this year. For McFarlane's team, the fantasy-style graphic design presented in three-dimensional fashion is something worth looking forward to.

"The first thing we do is set up cameras in the Monument Valley world," McFarlane said. " ”