By Jim Rossignol on March 26th, 2009 at 8:57 pm.
What happens when a prodigiously talented illustrator like, say, Nathan Jurevicius, turns his hand to designing a videogame? Well, it ends up being a side-scrolling action platformer with visuals that are so astonishingly good you could use them to start a religion. It’s called Scarygirl (site might be broken in Firefox). And this is seriously pretty stuff: a trailer that you will be CTRL-V’ing to everyone on your IM list in about five minutes time.
Via the awesome Indiegames blog, who reckon it will be free to play too. Blimey.
Nowhere near as pretty as And Yet It Moves and also I think you meant CTRL-V’ing
http://www.vimeo.com/2747746
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Very nice visuals, reminds me of Hot Topic inspired Aquaria
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Severity has nailed it for me. It looks like an exercise in counter-culture merchandise branding, which tickles an irritable part of my brain. Still, pretty nonetheless.
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This looks very nice. I hope it has the game play to match up with what looks to be a very pretty (and well scored too) experience. I also hope the fighting bits can be skipped over (or are super easy), as I’m usually crap at them.
I suppose it’s a deliberate part of the cut-out paper style, but I don’t like how jerky the animation is in And Yet It Moves. Also, it might have been because I was playing with the keyboard, but the controls didn’t really feel smooth enough, especially with the world rotating in giant 90-degree steps. And I never really had any idea of how close I was to (the fairly low) splatter-velocity, so I felt like I had to do everything in the tiniest of steps, which isn’t too fun and made the demo way too easy. Some of the stuff he’s doing in that trailer, for example, looks to be at least twice as far/fast as I felt like I was able to get away with before I splattered.
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Curses! You posted a new post specifically about AYIM right after I wrote that. Well, I’m just going to both Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V what I wrote above.
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It looks really good, but it’s just shooting and jumping, for god sake. It’s not 1985 anymore.
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It does look simplistic. But MY GOD, that is pretty.
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Looks graphically absolutely amazing but the gameplay looked a bit… wonky.
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Very nice visual style for sure. Though it does seem tailor-made to appeal to the masses of counterculture yoofs out there. I mean, a freaky little gothic pirate girl?
It will likely sell a million copies. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Yay indie!
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Yeah, it looks very nice, but like people have said, the gameplay looks pretty basic. It could be good, though.
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Looks awesome. And it doesn’t exactly look basic to me – Pushing over a giant egg, riding a stunt rocket bike, shooting, fighting, platforming. What more do you want?
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Thanks for the comments. It’s fair enough to say the platform stuff is kinda simplistic, but 1985 (Super Mario Bros Famicom) is pushing it a bit. I’d say more 1995 (Yoshi’s Island) though with a bit of that casual game flair for random interludes (mini-games can be that right?).
The games got three difficulty levels from super easy to super hard so we hope it’s good for everyone.
It takes me an hour and twenty minutes to finish it, so hopefully it’s got depth too. A first timer would take over two hours at a guess.
It’s strange how people see good visual + water and think “Aquaria”. Guess it’s a good thing :)
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It looks nice, but the animations are a bit jerky for my taste, and there’s nothing really stellar about the gameplay that jumps out at me. Probably will give this one a miss.
The fighting bit in particular looked awkward.
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Looks pretty snazzy to me.
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“It does look simplistic. But MY GOD, that is pretty.”
I’ve heard THAT one before.
(But really, it looks amazing.)
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PSYCHO CRUSHAAA!!!
SOLD!
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If it’s free, why are we complaining the simplicity? If the game wears off in half an hour, who cares? Don’t tell me that visual splendor isn’t worth half an hour of your time.
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Reminds me of Lenore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenore,_the_Cute_Little_Dead_Girl
psst.. these are hosted illegally though Roman Dirge doesn’t care but Sony do. So that’s a good thing.
http://www.kouznetsov.ru/misc/lenore/lenore01.swf
you can probably work out where the rest are. No idea what’s on the rest of the site so I wouldn’t go delving if I were you.
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Under what form of madness is this coming to us sans cost? Looks gorgeous, A Must Download.
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I’ll give it a go if it’s free (freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee) but I don’t know what to make of it aside from looking nice.
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Gorgeouuuuus graphics & visual design.
The game itself looks to be a bit on the shit side of average.
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This is what the inside of Gruff Rhys’ mind looks like.
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Beautiful, will look for it.
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That is cute, in a JHTM with colors kind of way. Nice heads up.
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It’s odd: as Jhonen Vasquez and Tim Burton lose their creative powers and fall ever deeper into autoplagiarism, their influence on the next generation of artists just seems to keep growing. (In this case, add in a splash of Takashi Murakami, who never seemed to me to have anything real to say in the first place.)
Maybe this just marks me as old, but I have to say I just don’t get it. Mario (or maybe Sonic) doing JTHM+Corpse Bride cosplay is funny in concept, but astonishing? Beautiful? Gorgeous? Really?
I’m not questioning anyone’s taste, merely expressing my befuddlement: I liked the originals just fine, but I genuinely don’t understand the appeal of the remixes. Doesn’t the triteness rob this of its visual appeal? Or is there such an unfilled appetite for this style that it doesn’t matter? (Or maybe what I’m missing is that for those who grew up with it, this just seems like one of the “default” available style palettes, rather than the creation of those particular artists …)
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Rhygadon:
“Doesn’t the triteness rob this of its visual appeal? Or is there such an unfilled appetite for this style that it doesn’t matter?”
This reminds me much more of the better kind of children’s book illustration than anything by Jhonen Vasquez or Tim Burton.
Shoving the art style into a specific category seems a bit silly though, and it’s hardly any wonder that people get excited about something that looks like a splendidly beautiful little gem. If you think it’s beautiful or not is a matter of taste of course :)
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oh my freaking god, this looks so beautiful.
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@Sp4rkR4t
you can’t compare it to ‘and yet it moves’ at all. the looks are totally different.
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Looks pretty lame, actually. Wizards & Warriors meets 1990s Tim Burton. Snore.
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The game is live right now at http://www.scarygirl.com/ !
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I’ve been playing the game almost non-stop, and here is the first real, in-depth review. Thanks to the authors for their hard work!
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-= Game Updates =-
The game has been updated in response to users feedback, with more to come at a later date.
Changes include:
* tighter “physics”
* new control scheme: UP for jump, SPACE for attack and activate
* no more false virus alerts
* new servers for faster loading
* completely new swimming mechanic: you just press the direction you want to go – should be easier for those people who have to rotate maps to find their way.
Have fun, and please keep the criticism, and praise, coming.
Tarwin – Touch My Pixel
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