Homework 3: Article Paragraphs

Mind-Bending Architecture Photos From A World Inspired By Escher

I chose this article to talk about primarily for two reasons: I love videogames, and I love M.C. Escher's artwork. The detailed, almost-dreamlike worlds and scenes he created enchanted me as a child, and they still do to this day. I never get tired of looking at them. Therefore, the idea behind Manifold Garden (formerly Relativity), a game in which one gets to roam a world modeled after his art, bending gravity to discover new locations and solve puzzles, is an intriguing concept. I also believe that a game like this further demonstrates how videogames are quickly becoming a viable medium of art and a means of narration. This doesn't necessarily mean that all games are art, or even that a game has to be artsy to be good. The primary purpose of a videogame is to entertain the player, and to try to take the 'game' out of 'videogame' essentially reduces it to little more than an interactive picture (though that might actually be interesting to see, as long as it doesn't pretend it's a videogame).

Thankfully, Manifold Garden seems to balance art and gameplay rather well. The player is tasked to roam an open world and solve puzzles by changing the laws of gravity and shifting through different gravitational fields. One example shown in the Devlog requires a player to keep a purple cube on a purple wall panel suspended off the ground in order to unlock a door. The solution involves using a blue cube in a different field of gravity as a shelf to hold up the purple cube--one field's wall is another's floor. Mind-bending puzzles such as this engage the player and give them a reason to explore the world, aside from simply taking pictures of any cool impossible architecture they happen to find.

I feel that games such as this are an excellent example of technology and art working together in harmony to produce something wondrous and engaging. They are more than just a videogame or a piece of art, they are an interactive experience. Manifold Garden has great potential, both as a game and as a work of art, and I hope to see it come to fruition.