Brazil :: Toren

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Sacrifice your childhood, Moonchild

In 2016 Brazil hosted 48(!) Global Game Jam locations. So I thought it will be incredibly easy finding tons of games from Brazil. However, choosing a game was not an easy task. While people from Brazil play a lot, and always lead the game consumer lists on the Steam sales page, the number of studios only grows slowly. Well-known games such as Agar.io or Outlive were developed in Brazil. However, compared to the enormous number of interested developers and jammers, I found only a small list of games published in Brazil. Also it is interesting to read that this country seems to have quite strict censorships. Bully, for instance was banned, sales of Counter-Strike were prohibited in 2008 [R]. Nevertheless, at the moment Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is the favourite game in Brazil according to Steam statistics.

Steam Download statistics retrieved 02/03/16 from http://store.steampowered.com/stats/content/
Steam Download statistics retrieved 02/03/16 from http://store.steampowered.com/stats/content/

Asking mighty Twitter for recommendations for games, especially titles from the studios Aquiris Game Studio (Horizon Chase), Behold Studios (Knights of Pen and Paper +1 [definitely on my Steam wishlist now!]), or Joy Masher were named. It was not easy, but the game I finally chose for my project was “Toren”, one of the youngest of these games, developed by the Brazilian Indie Studio Swordtales. Toren was the first game supported by the Brazilian’s government and got financial support from the Brazilian Ministry of Culture.

The saying “Life is short” gets definitely a new meaning when playing this game. You play this strong female character called “Moonchild”. Your goal is to beat the dragon on top of this mysterious tower (Toren). While you are climbing this tower you are also growing up. So it’s quite interesting when you to start as a toddler, crawling through your first quest. On your way you would constantly fall into dream sequences. You are never entirely sure if you are currently dreaming or awake. After such sequences the character often comes back to the tower grown older. The environment, all animations, and in particular the cutscenes were artistically crafted with so much love for detail. The puzzles and fights were not particularly hard but the main element of this game is definitely this process of growing with the character, surrounded by inspiring poems, metaphors, and mysterious music.

Playing this game was not challenging and its focus is not on sophisticated game mechanics. Playing this game was a pleasing and somehow healing (?) experience. It was a very intense and simply wonderful, beautiful – sometimes dark – experience. AND it was definitely hard to pick just a few screenshots out of this giant list of beautiful pictures I took while playing (experiencing) this game. (I felt like an artist while taking screenshots, which immediately turned out to be super-fancy and meaningful pieces of art.)

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Release 2015
Genre Adventure
Developer Swordtales
Publisher Versus Evil
http://toren-game.com/

Switzerland :: Feist

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Feist – I’m a small, small thing in an evil, evil world.

The first game recommended by some guys from Switzerland was Feist. I was also pointed to the Steam Curator-List “Swiss Games”. Feist is a indie game developed by the Zurich studio Bits & Beasts. Looking at the website, this game won about 1000 awards. So I was also very excited to download the game. I was even more excited to see an offer at HumbleBundle for 7$.

At first glance the graphics and atmosphere of the game look very similar to Limbo. But I’ve loved Limbo, so – good for me. You start the game as .. a box. I didn’t see this coming, but ok. So I would make my way through the game as a box. After introducing the controls, and making the box swing, you get the idea that something might be inside the box. When I finally managed to destroy the box, I was super-excited to see this amazing small, fluffy creature, which somehow reminded me of this Austrian book for children “Swabidu”.

What immediately catches the attention is the intense and atmospheric background music. Also the graphics are very artistic and would give the game a very special ambience.

The first level is very smooth and gives a nice introduction to get used to the controls. And then.. the game already starts with its first tricky puzzles. And pretty soon it gets depressing. Your enemies are very uncomfortable and fast, and the puzzles definitely not easy. From this point you wouldn’t relate Feist to Limbo anymore. So suddenly the game principle is clear: fail to succeed. You have to learn from your failures. And you will fail a lot. This is actually a mechanic not a lot of AAA games would dare to use anymore. Early games, such as Zelda – Ocarina of Time were constantly challenging players with tricky puzzles and forcing players to actually restart levels several times (or look for level guides in the web – which was very slow back then). New games often give players hints really soon (if the player fails too often) in order not to frustrate them and lose their attention. Replaying Zelda on the Nintendo DS, for instance, was a shocking experience. They’ve included this “stone of wisdom”, which would give players hints to the solution – in form of video clips showing how to solve the puzzles.

So in Feist, you are living through this tiny, fluffy, hairy creature, which gets pushed around by all the other creatures in the forest and is either trapped or on the run. Your weapons are ridiculous powerless sticks and cones – your enemies giant thorny mosquitos, caterpillars, and moles (?). Often you would just run. Sometimes you would hide or look for ways out. And this game design works. I’ve definitely enjoyed playing Feist and would recommend it to everyone with a free evening, but don’t expect it to be stressless.Screen Shot 2016-01-26 at 22.22.13

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Release 2015
Genre platformer, puzzle
Developer Bits & Beasts
Publisher Finji
https://playfeist.net