You can’t make something seem loud if it’s never been quiet, and like in art, ‘complementary’ colors are the ones that contrast the most. I think it boils down to this: You need proper contrast to make any experience meaningful. “It makes perfect sense to me that this combination works,” Ritchie, the Dredge developer, told Polygon. The way Strange Horticulture’s cozy and dark elements weave themselves into a nest is both comforting and unnerving - it’s a feeling that feels good to sit inside, with no need to unravel it. There’s an element of mystery to Strange Horticulture, a curious pull that’s similar to that of Dredge. It’s a slow game that moves forward with each new customer and the ring of the counter bell. The twist is that Strange Horticulture’s plants, as you may have guessed from the title, are quite strange: Some will lure people to their deaths, and others can be used as incense that screams while it burns. Playing as a new shopkeep, you must label and learn about plants, then sell them to the people of Undermere, a dark and rainy town at the edge of a forest. Last year’s Strange Horticulture settles the player into a tiny plant shop with a purring cat. It’s a game that’s definitely more dark and fundamentally hard than cozy, but that doesn’t diminish the warmer aspects of playing everyone who bullied me into trying this - i love you #cozygamer #cozygame #cozygaming #nintendoswitch #strangehorticulture #cozygamergirl #aestheticgamer #switchrecommendations ♬ original sound - Cozy Games | Kennedy When you get used to failure - or you use one of Don’t Starve’s creative modes - you can fall into the feeling of coziness. Its aesthetic absolutely says cozy with its muted colors and cute cartoon world, but the gameplay is uncompromising cozy in Don’t Starve is more of a mindset. The 2013 survival video game from Canadian studio Klei Entertainment is notoriously hard. The dark cozy game genre can be traced back years or decades Don’t Starve may just be the original example, depending on who you ask. Similarly, Dredge developer Michael Bastiaens added that it’s easy to get pulled out of the game’s quieter moments, but that it’s the “tension and fear,” perhaps, that makes the cozier and more mundane bits feel more impactful. It’s also a pastime that developer Joel Mason happens to enjoy. The repetitive structure of fishing, both in games and in real life, always pulls Dredge back from the edge when it veers too close. “Now, though, I think you can get that experience from it.” “If you had asked during development whether I thought Dredge would appeal to cozy games, I probably would have said no,” he said. New Zealand-based Dredge developer Black Salt Games didn’t necessarily plan for the game to feel cozy developer Alex Ritchie told Polygon that uneasiness and curiosity were the two feelings he wanted to carry throughout the game.
Cozy grove platforms full#
“That may look like an island full of cutesy animals or a dark boat expedition with mutant fish.” “Cozy gamers want something that’s entertaining and engaging but not something that brings us to that high-stress, competitive state that some games might,” Rose said. These are the elements of community and consistency that keep Dredge from getting too dark. It’s the fishmongers and fellow seafarers who buy your fish and fix your ship. It’s the loop of its simple fishing minigame that leads into a cargo hull-sized game of Tetris. Almost in spite of itself, Dredge has a warmth to it that pulls it into the cozy genre. Hallucinations can do actual damage unknowable sea monsters can tear your ship apart. There are monsters to be found - or to find you - and consequences for spending too many nights without sleep. These qualities fit in between the game’s other themes - the mysteries and horrors of the sea - to different degrees throughout the game. It’s in the slow, methodical pattern of Dredge’s gameplay and the nature of fishing itself.
It may seem like a cozy dark game complicates the idea of a cozy game: How could a game like Dredge, which delves into psychological horror, be considered a cozy game? But Dredge is much more than the mangled, grotesque fish that players pull up from the depths and the red-rimmed eyes of the fisherman protagonist from his nights without sleep. Dredge has a warmth to it that pulls it into the cozy genre
0 kommentar(er)
