The other night I was daydreaming (if you still call it that at night). And a idea of a video game came to me. One that was set in a fantasy world and was shot almost entirely with tilt-shift so that everything seemed really small.
I thought, “hey, that would be really cool” and I went to sleep thinking no more of it.
Then yesterday I loaded up threads looking for more content to rescore when I saw this clip:
(This was the original clip but the game and developer were not mentioned.)
This was exactly what I pictured.
I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. Oh universe you are funny.
The clip is from the upcoming game on steam called O EMPIRE! WARD OFF THY ROT.
p.s. The name reminds me of Godspeed you black emperor.
So I decided to produce a theme for the little character in the main game which went something like this.
I've been logging onto threads in the morning and writing music inspired by other people's content which has been lots of fun
It was his “I alone shall carry this burden” theme.
During the night after being woken by my bladder my mind went tot this game again and I decided to find out more about it.
It is produced by Dean Moynihan. You can play some of his other games here
The game is described like this:
"A slow, meditative survival journey across a bleak continent. Carry an evil artifact, manage scarce resources, scavenge abandoned places and decide how far you’re willing to endure in a world that offers no reassurance."
Which sounds awesome to me.
As I read more about the game and found this sentence,
“The tone is bleak and contemplative, inspired by slow cinema, low fantasy and mythic allegory.”
Slow cinema? What is that. (Googles slow cinema):
a minimalist genre of art film that uses extended long takes, sparse dialogue, and quiet, observational pacing to encourage viewer contemplation over fast-paced storytelling
Ah ok, that sounds like a visual equivalent of slow blogging. Which is something I have always been interested in the idea of but not necessarily the practice. I don’t think I have the patience for long, in depth posts.
This then leads me to my second question of “what is low fantasy?”
Low fantasy is a sub-genre of fantasy fiction where magical or supernatural elements intrude upon an otherwise normal, rational world
As a fan of fantasy fiction (currently reading Eye of the world) I was surprised that I did not realise that that style of fantasy had a name.
This gives me similar vibes to finding out about Dungeon Synth.
Anyway this post was actually a really long and rambling way of saying one thing…
There is so much fun in diving down the rabbit hole. Following a single spark or idea or question and seeing where it leads you.
As a side note I was looking through more of Dean’s games and found Red which he made during GBJam which is this awesome project where you make Gameboy inspired games. Then I found https://www.gbstudio.dev 🤯 Which I would say is another rabbit hole altogether!
