Blueberry Garden
Serenity is an ideal that many game designers are not terribly interested in exploring. As a counterpoint or juxtaposition, sure, but as the core element? An experience that is entirely at peace, where there is little objective and direction beyond just breathing in the atmosphere and enjoying a bit of leisure? Such games seldom, if ever, appear.
Blueberry Garden, a 2D platformer developed by Erik Svedäng and released three years ago, is that rare sort of game where its aimless presentation actually has thematic resonance. It wants to offer you a place where real life concerns just melt away while you explore an inviting world free of tension and conflict. It wants you to be at peace.
http://www.confederatewing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/BlueBerry-Garden.jpg
As the player character, a delightful birdman creature with a black hat and three button tunic, you're placed in a garden with virtually no context or instruction. Before your arrival, a running faucet is displayed, but it's of little concern. You're lost in a garden, which actually isn't a terrible place in which to find yourself lost. The stark black and white world unfurls in both directions, its vibrantly coloured fruit, shrubbery, and scattered trinkets punctuating the start white fill and black defining lines like a <url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Mondrian>Mondrian painting. Soar through the air, and one of a handful of original dreamlike and slightly melancholic solo piano tracks begin to play. It's beautiful.
The objective, for there must be some underlying point to all of this even though it thankfully forgoes urgency in favour of exploration, is to build a tower in the approximate centre of the land in order to fly off and shut the aforementioned faucet before the garden floods and the game restarts. The strange medley of common items that contribute to this tower - a camera, a pencil, a hat, a saltshaker, etc. - are all retrieved by momentarily standing next to them, whereupon they're automatically whisked away to be added. As the tower grows, more regions become accessible, and the full scope of the game world reveals itself to be deceptively large. The power of flight which normally closes in vast distances nevertheless retains its inherent marvel and majesty as you soar through the clouds and feel the air whizzing past while listening to a lovely piano waltz.
Even though flooding presents an underlying threat, Blueberry Garden never fosters the sense of racing against time, and indeed mitigating that disaster is not at all challenging. The overarching goal is merely an incentive to spend time with the game and not the final objective. Thus as a game, as something to be completed and discarded before moving on to something else, you'll be done in a half hour. But as an experience, as something worth returning to over and over again either to explore further, to sample the land deformation mechanics, or just to fly around listening to some lovely music, it's something more. It's a peaceful retreat. It's rather timeless.
Developed by Erik Svedäng. Released in June 2009 on Steam. Reviewed on a dull summer day by Maet.
Serenity is an ideal that many game designers are not terribly interested in exploring. As a counterpoint or juxtaposition, sure, but as the core element? An experience that is entirely at peace, where there is little objective and direction beyond just breathing in the atmosphere and enjoying a bit of leisure? Such games seldom, if ever, appear.
Blueberry Garden, a 2D platformer developed by Erik Svedäng and released three years ago, is that rare sort of game where its aimless presentation actually has thematic resonance. It wants to offer you a place where real life concerns just melt away while you explore an inviting world free of tension and conflict. It wants you to be at peace.
http://www.confederatewing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/BlueBerry-Garden.jpg
As the player character, a delightful birdman creature with a black hat and three button tunic, you're placed in a garden with virtually no context or instruction. Before your arrival, a running faucet is displayed, but it's of little concern. You're lost in a garden, which actually isn't a terrible place in which to find yourself lost. The stark black and white world unfurls in both directions, its vibrantly coloured fruit, shrubbery, and scattered trinkets punctuating the start white fill and black defining lines like a <url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Mondrian>Mondrian painting. Soar through the air, and one of a handful of original dreamlike and slightly melancholic solo piano tracks begin to play. It's beautiful.
The objective, for there must be some underlying point to all of this even though it thankfully forgoes urgency in favour of exploration, is to build a tower in the approximate centre of the land in order to fly off and shut the aforementioned faucet before the garden floods and the game restarts. The strange medley of common items that contribute to this tower - a camera, a pencil, a hat, a saltshaker, etc. - are all retrieved by momentarily standing next to them, whereupon they're automatically whisked away to be added. As the tower grows, more regions become accessible, and the full scope of the game world reveals itself to be deceptively large. The power of flight which normally closes in vast distances nevertheless retains its inherent marvel and majesty as you soar through the clouds and feel the air whizzing past while listening to a lovely piano waltz.
Even though flooding presents an underlying threat, Blueberry Garden never fosters the sense of racing against time, and indeed mitigating that disaster is not at all challenging. The overarching goal is merely an incentive to spend time with the game and not the final objective. Thus as a game, as something to be completed and discarded before moving on to something else, you'll be done in a half hour. But as an experience, as something worth returning to over and over again either to explore further, to sample the land deformation mechanics, or just to fly around listening to some lovely music, it's something more. It's a peaceful retreat. It's rather timeless.
Developed by Erik Svedäng. Released in June 2009 on Steam. Reviewed on a dull summer day by Maet.
