Tuesday, January 29, 2013

"Heart of Darkness" sampler, 1996.

WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN
No, I won't transcribe the text. I guess this is what happens when your game's entire budget is blown on development and you have absolutely nothing left to cover promotional expenses.

It's such an ignominious way to go down. Eric Chahi, game design superstar, riding the high from his virtuous graphics and animations in Delphi's adventure game Future Wars, goes on to singlehandedly build the unprecedentedly cinematic Out Of This World. His genius is aped by his former employer Delphine with Flashback and Fade to Black and by Delphine's North American publisher with Heart of the Alien, but his next project following his mangum opus is this schizoid platform epic of a boy and his dog, unclear if it wants to play up the innocent boy genius angle (whose ship is a dead-on copy of Commander Keen's Bean-With-Bacon Megarocket) or the gritty '90s moodiness that pervaded that angsty decade.

One thing that's guaranteed to terminate a gloomy atmosphere with extreme prejudice, however, is having to redeem two Gummi Savers wrappers. Yes, Pixar won a Gold Clio award in 1993 for its advertisement for the wobbly chewy candy rings, but they're neon, not nihilist. There is no "dark" gummy saver. (The "Darth Vader" M&M doesn't even come close.)

Chahi is still in the game, even if this particular development studio didn't survive the protracted development hell, and you can check out his 2011 god game From Dust... and see which candy manufacturer sponsored it!

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