VIDEO GAME REVIEW: Game played in a stunning world
A nostalgic approach to gaming, gorgeous hand-painted backgrounds and an emotional soundtrack recorded by a live ensemble – this is the world of The Whispered World (TWW).
Within the past decade, point-and-click adventure games have become a dying genre. For many people, this is considered a huge loss to the gaming community.
Point-and-click adventure games strip away all of today’s modern game mechanics, leaving the player with only two options: pointing the cursor and clicking it. This simplicity in game design creates an unrivaled emphasis in storytelling, character development and exploration.
TWW not only promises to be the genre’s return to glory, but represents the key element many games today are missing – the emotional connection. This aspect is achieved in TWW through the use of beautiful hand-painted backdrops and an inspiring musical score.
But where does this creative energy come from? TWW is currently being developed by German-based gaming studio Daedalic Entertainment. Jan Müller-Michaelis, creative director at Daedalic, said they want to bring gamers a compelling story with great characters and state-of-the-art animation.
In terms of both visual style and tone, Michaelis said the game is influenced by the Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli.
“The Studio Ghibli movies appeal both to kids as well as adults, with their slight melancholy and visually exciting worlds. We wanted to achieve the same thing with The Whispered World,” he said.
Creating the visual style is a complex and interesting process. The backgrounds are created by a team of artists who spend upwards of three weeks on a single background. That’s because the backgrounds range in size from one screen to six screens and are composed of dozens of layers.
Marco Hüllen, lead artist at Daedalic, said when the game is finished there will be around 60 backgrounds with hundreds upon hundreds of animations. Furthermore, Hüllen said the animation is a traditional hand-drawn frame-by-frame process.
“That gives the look of the game a great cohesiveness and a storybook quality that many of today’s games are missing. We are employing complex parallax scrolling of backgrounds made up of up to 20 layers, which gives the environments great depth and makes the world feel very much alive,” Hüllen said.
The visually stunning art is accompanied by an original 60-minute soundtrack divided into 12 themes and recorded by a live ensemble. The themes change according to the player’s actions, said Finn Seliger, creative director of the periscope studio Hamburg.
“We wanted every melody and every note of the soundtrack to reflect the magic, beauty and mysticism of the game story. All the music themes of which the complete soundtrack consists are connected and evoke this Whispered World-feeling in every moment of the gameplay,” Seliger said.
Finding the right emotions for the score happened quickly because of the strong pictures and fascinating story, Seliger said.
From a creative standpoint, TWW is shaping up to be a must-have game. I’m eagerly anticipating the release and I think others should be, too.
This is the game every point-and-click adventure fan should be excited for. And even for those who are not fans of the genre, the art and music is enough to relish the experience.
TWW will be released on the PC in early 2009 in a number of territories, followed by a Nintendo DS version. For more information, including screenshots, music and story, check out www.the-whispered-world.com.
–tim.russell@aggiemail.usu.edu