Explore The Papery Theatre Of The Collage Atlas
Drawing attention
Yesterday was RPS at EGX day so I spent part of my early afternoon hunkering down in the Leftfield Collection, cooing over the handdrawn loveliness of The Collage Atlas [official site].
I should probably confess that it wasn't until I finished playing that I realised that I'd been erroneously calling it The College Atlas and was confused about the game's role in the education system. Collage makes far more sense when you consider that the objects in the game appear as these hand drawn papery flat planes positioned in the three dimensional space like scenery on a stage.
You move past these flat, theatrical trees and lanterns, pinwheels and gates, undersea wrecks and little bubbles. The world is mostly monochrome but you get flashes of colour as you interact.
I'd say the art style and the dreamy vaguely puzzle-solvyness of moving around so letters line up into phrases are the strongest parts of it at the moment. It's still very much in development though so I assume it may well change a bit over time.
I'm particularly interested in seeing how the game guides you might develop as I got really lost several times in the demo and had to press the button to become unlost as I couldn't even find my way back to where I'd been! Maybe that will become part of the point? Also, y'know, there is always the unlost button.
Its developer, John Evelyn, has let me know that it's ABSOLUTELY DEFINITELY for PC as I realised none of the material I've seen has explicitly confirmed that. Hooray!
Oh, and one last thing - he also posts pictures of the illustrations-in-progress and snippets from development on Instagram which are lovely if you're looking for people to follow on that.