Posts Tagged ‘Oleomingus’

Oleomingus’s Under A Porcelain Sun looks gorgeous

Oleomingus will continue their run of making some of the prettiest video games around in Under A Porcelain Sun. Last week the two-person Indian studio announced this next journey into Somewhere, their strange and wonderful cross-game look at stories about searches for a mythical city. It’s a big tangle of stories within stories within storybooks within virtual museums within games within true stories within fake histories, a post-colonial explosion of attempts to capture culture and history. Also it’s all chuffing beautiful. Come look at these fields of toothpaste and towers of taps: Read the rest of this entry »

A Museum of Dubious Splendors is quite splendid

The wonderful Studio Oleomingus last night launched A Museum of Dubious Splendors, their latest Borgesian blast of hot explore-o-fiction. It’s another fragment of their mythical game Somewhere and, like many of the others, is itself made of fragments of stories and fictional histories built around stories. In short: you get to read some nice short stories and look at lovely little rooms. Oleomingus are making some of the prettiest dang video games around. Read the rest of this entry »

Tour a virtual gallery in The Zium Museum

Ziummuseumheader

Have you ever been wandering around a museum, turned a corner, and been baptised in a never-ending stream of confetti and balloons? I hadn’t either until I took a stroll around The Zium Museum, a virtual gallery “composed of eclectic and wonderful things”. There’s more to see than confetti and balloons, promise.

The gallery was curated by Michael Berto, who’s used the work of 37 developers and artists to construct a virtual museum. I’ve only walked around it for ten minutes, but you can bet I’ll be heading back this evening for a more thorough investigation.

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Somewhere’s fragments continue to mystify and delight

Oleomingus’s work is some of my favourite stuff to gawp at. For several years, they’ve been working on Somewhere, a surreal first-person metafictional doodad about the search for a missing city, inspired partially by the winding tales and worlds of Borges and Calvino. As Oleomingus have released prototypes and short spin-offs, Somewhere has gone from stealth to story to… I increasingly suspect that it’s a big trick, that Somewhere is not a game but all of these pieces together, combined with all their dev blogs, their screenshots, and their short stories.

So a new video of nosetowers is as much as the game as recent screenshots of giant lightbulbs as the last playable bit they released. All are Somewhere and all are great. Read the rest of this entry »

Reminder: Oleomingus Do Strange And Beautiful Work

I feel like we should have an official policy on posting periodic reminders that the work Oleomingus are doing is strange and wonderful. While I draft the wording on that policy here’s a non-scheduled reminder as the two-person studio is back to working on their sort-of-anthology game Somewhere [official site]:

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Timruk, A Gorgeous Story Within A Story Within A Book

Here’s a provocative declaration for you: Studio Oleomingus are making the best-looking games in all of videodom right now.

Flicking through pages of storybooks and stepping into tales as they’re being told, their games overfill surreal sets with knick-knacks and bric-à-brac, books vases and teapots and skulls and jars and flowers and taps and televisions and giant toothbrushes. They’re colourful and weird, and I want to touch every ornate surface. Each new fragment of Somewhere, whatever that ends up being, is prettier than the last. All of which is to say, Timruk [official site] is their latest pretty tale, and it’s out now for free.

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RPS Feature Awfully pretty

Flowers And Entropy In Free Game Menagerie

The fine folks at Oleomingus have released another curious little free game, Menagerie [official site]. Based on a script and performance by Prayas Abhinav, Vidisha Saini, and Agat Sharma, it’s a gorgeous room filled with replicating men and deteriorating conversation. Pip and Alice had a look.

Pip: Alice, I feel like we’ve both drooled over Oleomingus screenshots and teasers and game snippets independently. What say we convene and discuss the leafy bathroom chat that is Menagerie TOGETHER? I’m launching it right now so I can tell you all about my favourite leaves, by the way.

Alice: Pip, a game about a chat which becomes increasingly incoherent sounds ideal for us. Also, it is the prettiest dang thing I’ve seen in a while.

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It’s Stare At Somewhere Screenshots Monday!

Oh so pretty!

I’ve read more dev blog posts than you’ve had hot dinners. That might actually be true. Let’s pretend it is. Speaking with my newfound authority as someone more familiar with dev blogs than you are pie and mash, I’ll declare that few delight me as consistently as the Oleomingus gang’s. Each load of work-in-progress screenshots and art is a ray of loveliness in my RSS reader, and doesn’t that sound nice on a Monday morning? So come play Alice Simulator 2015 [timely gag -ed.] by enjoying a look at what they’re up to with first-person explore-o-metastory Somewhere.

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Surreal Sneaking: Sample Somewhere With Rituals

Taking the ritual of brushing your teeth before bed a bit too far.

A first-person explore-a-stealth-o-chat game about stepping into books and other people’s heads to see different sides of a story sounds right up oh so many of my alleys, so I’ve been keeping an eye on Somewhere. I cooed and gushed about how pretty it was looking in July, and today I heartily enjoyed poking around that surreal house myself. Developers Oleomingus have released a free “early alpha” build under the name Rituals, showing a separate area to their earlier “pre-alpha” standalone Fictions. It is a game to be curious about and toy with. It is pleasant.

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First-person Stealth-o-Metafiction: Somewhere

What a somewhere that is!

If I could be anywhere right now, it’d be Somewhere. Look at this video game! Now listen to the song which plays on that radio. Now listen to that song while continuing to look at Somewhere.

It’s a first-person “exploration and stealth” game (with leaning and everything) about different perspectives and incomplete understanding, possessing people to see the world through their eyes and turning the world around. We cast our eye over it in March but oh my, two-man team Oleomingus have been very busy since then. Look at all these wonderful things.

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