This week I thought we could explore the indie game scene, and touch on a game I played not so long ago. What I mean by indie in this scenario is games from smaller independent companies, who develop quality, but most aren't at the level of your massive commercial block busters like say the latest God of War or Spider-Man. Those companies have almost unlimited budgets when it comes to developing these massive games, and probably thousands of employees that spend three to four years on a single game. There is no way a small game studio could ever compete with a corporate machine that churns out game after game, and most of the time these little guys are self funded, or take huge risks to make their games.
What I personally love about some of the indie games I have played is this reoccurring theme that is present in most of them, which is this simplistic beauty of the game. It is a small, simple idea that is executed with the greatest of care, kind of like the difference between having something mass produced and something hand crafted. Unravel takes one of the earliest game formula's, and re-imagined it in a beautifully designed setting with a lovable character called Yarny.
She gets up from her chair and makes her way up the stairs, and as she does this the ball of yarn falls to the floor and rolls out of our view. Yarny, an anthropomorphic creature made of red yarn, then walks into frame, wondrously marveling at the world around him, as if it was a new born baby looking at everything around him for the first time ever. Yarny notices that he can interact with all the different picture frames throughout the house, and can visit environments that were significant in the home owners lives, and share in their memories about the places they have been and visited. At the beginning of the story the memories are happy, such as visiting the sea shore, or hiking though the mountains, but eventually as the story progresses things become much darker. Memories of the rural forest area that has become industrialized, which in turn then causes accidents with toxic waste, and all the people who leave the country and start moving to the city. In every picture memory that Yarny explores, he will find a red yarn badge at the end of each of these level which he collects. As he continues his journey through the world, Yarny is continuously unraveling, leaving a trail of red yarn as he goes. According to the writer, the red yarn that makes up Yarny represents love, and that the character unravels as they travel further away from what they love, which is why the memories become darker as the game progresses.
"Usually, when people watch magic, there are two levels: the people who walk away accepting that there are things they don't know, and the other group, who wants to know, 'How did it work? How did that happen?' They want to unravel the puzzle." - Apollo Robbins
While this is predominantly a physics based puzzle game, which means trying to solve your way from one level to the next, all while incorporating fun mechanics, at it's core Unravel is an emotionally complex adventure set against a breathtaking landscape. The character of Yarny is rather adorable, and he is animated with such skill that he’s able to convey more emotion than some human characters, especially considering he has no facial features apart from two eyes and a very convincingly textured wool body.
All in all, Unravel is a beautiful emotionally driven game, that provokes subtle and complex emotions through the use of nature and it's characters interaction with the environment. It's far more of a puzzle game but has elements which brings back that old nostalgic feeling of platform games we use to play in the arcade. The game is actually pretty short running at about 8 hours and you can finish it in about a day or two. I played this like almost like watching a TV series, playing a level each week, sort of as a break for the main game I was invested it. Unravel makes for a sincere, thoughtful, and incredibly likeable tale, which I think everyone will enjoy, young or old.
Unfortunately I have to date never heard about the people at Coldwood, that's because they are still quite new to the game development scene and apart from the Unravel series and games like Move Fitness and Ski Racing they have not really created any block buster games. This is also the first time I have come across a game company from Sweden, seems it's not just my home country that doesn't feature much in the game world. Unravel was originally announced in June 2015 and was then released in February 2016 on all the usual suspects, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows. If this is up your ally then you are in luck, you can pick this up for on the PlayStation Store for about 45 Steem or you can pay 100 Steem and get Unravel plus Unravel Two. I'm pretty sure you could find this discounted at most online stores or your local game shop, as the game is now over three years old, and anywhere a year to two, you can find great deals on old titles.
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