By Jim Rossignol on November 23rd, 2012 at 10:00 am.
Why, we do love our abstract exploration games over here at Castle Shotgun. We can never resist their colourful allure. But here’s one with a dark twist: The mighty Indie Games leads us to student project Paradis Perdus, by Sergey Mohov, Fabian Bodet and Matthieu Bonneau. They explain the concept: “Paradis Perdus is a game of exploration and contemplation, except the time is also of essence, since everything you touch gets infected and eventually ceases to exist.”
Links to playable builds (OSX, Windows) here, and there’s a video below.
23/11/2012 at 10:09 themushroomsound says:
Wow, this is crazy.
Just to make things right, the musical theme has been composed by Michèle Kopff, she should be credited as well :)
(I’m the other sound guy on this project, in case that wasn’t obvious)
23/11/2012 at 10:15 MrEvilGuy says:
Found my pair o’ dice.
23/11/2012 at 10:19 RobinOttens says:
The concept and graphics style reminds me a bit of that ROME music video/interactive internet-thing from a year back. http://www.ro.me/ Coincidence?
Looks cool though.
23/11/2012 at 12:09 yhancik says:
Or you could say it looks like http://cargocollective.com/jrschmidt/Geometric-Landscapes. I think it’s just a certain kind low-poly aesthetic you can hardly really attribute to a single person/work ;)
23/11/2012 at 14:22 Salt says:
Also Timothy Reynold’s landscapes:
http://www.turnislefthome.com/33005/324719/work/low-poly-isometrics
And if I may be so bold, this game what I am making:
http://www.saltgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/sediOverBath.png
(Or more generally, any untextured 3d where normals are not interpolated between neighbouring triangles)
23/11/2012 at 10:22 Gnoupi says:
I get some Neverending Story vibe, from it.
23/11/2012 at 11:04 Mario Figueiredo says:
Is it really necessary to destroy the environment? Couldn’t the experience be better if we were just allowed to explore endlessly and interact endlessly? Maybe those collectible blue things could be used to generate seeds we could use to generate newer worlds (assuming this is procedural generation. Is it?)
I just don’t understand why limit the contemplative aspect of the game with what seems a random decision to include a way to destroy it.
23/11/2012 at 11:27 Mario Figueiredo says:
I’m thinking the above may be misunderstood…
It’s an honest question. Not a jab at the game design (in which case you could say it’s none of my business how you decide to do a game). However that’s not the point I’m trying to make.
It’s just that the game feels a bit like an Anti-Game; The best way to enjoy your lush creation is to not play it. Or play it in the knowledge I won’t see it ever again. Somehow this really makes me uncomfortable.
23/11/2012 at 11:59 yhancik says:
“The best way to enjoy your lush creation is to not play it. Or play it in the knowledge I won’t see it ever again. Somehow this really makes me uncomfortable.”
I think that’s precisely the point ;)
23/11/2012 at 19:01 frightlever says:
I played a couple of times but i don’t think I understood what I was doing. I collected a blue thing then another blue thing (up on a stone bridge) had turned into one of those gates so I went through that and the game ended. I didn’t interact with anything.
I thought it was a puzzle, insofar as you have to take a particular route or you don’t get to collect all the blue things. If you’re supposed to collect the blue things. There were definitely blue things, right? This isn’t the result of that blow to the head I took last night is it?
24/11/2012 at 14:37 Charles de Goal says:
I think the game title is related to Proust (approximately) saying “the only true paradises are those which we have lost”. The gameplay probably stems from that.
23/11/2012 at 12:32 VileJester says:
Would be even more interesting if it was procedurally generated.
23/11/2012 at 13:11 The Random One says:
My thoughts exactly! That way any interesting thing you see is a brand new thing that no one has ever seen before, and the interest would be truly yours and not an environment artist’s. And then you would look at it once and it would really be gone forever. There would be a long pause, and you would cry.
23/11/2012 at 13:42 Kefren says:
The Sentinel lives.
23/11/2012 at 18:56 ColOfNature says:
This is how Darwinians see their world.