Review game: Contrast
Shadows have always played a huge role in art. More than a thousand years ago, there was a shadow theater. The sharp contrast between light and shadow has become one of the key innovations in Renaissance painting and allowed to achieve the illusion of three-dimensionality. Contrast lighting – an essential element of stylistic German Expressionist films and films noir. Contemporary artists like Kumi Yamashita or Rashad Alakbarova make using shadows stunning installation. In the world of video games as an interactive element shadows also already met ( Echochrome II Brief information about the game ) But battered this idea did not name. That’s why Contrast immediately attracts attention.
Shadow ergonomics
System Requirements
- Win Xp 32
- Dual-Core CPU 2.2GHz
- GeForce GT 330/Radeon HD 3600
- 2 GB RAM
- 4 GB HDD
- Recommended
- Win 7 64
- Dual-Core CPU 3.0GHz
- GeForce GTS 250/Radeon HD 6670
- 4 GB RAM
- 4 GB HDD
Contrast – at first glance a typical puzzle-platformer, but with one caveat: here we jump on the roofs or no rocks and the shadows that create the surrounding objects. Typically, these items must be pre-arrange so that the shadow formed into the desired composition – steps, slides, platforms.
Managed player leggy girl named Dawn (Dawn) itself can turn into a shadow. Just need to go to the desired silhouette on the wall – and colorful 3D replaced black and white dvuhmerem. In addition, any time a girl can regain flesh and blood, to take any desired object – say, an umbrella, a box or a cannonball – and return with him to the world of shadows, another obstacle to overcome. Box clear will climb higher and umbrella will parachute.
The concept looks intriguing not only in words. The game is very tastefully decorated, and design – as the whole environment and individual puzzles – is to be commended. Contrast the action takes place in a black and white world of film noir, burlesque, cigarette smoke, neon signs and jazz. In a city that could well become a platform for the filming of “Casablanca” or “Blue Angel”.
Periodically, we jump at shadows or silhouette musicians local Rita Hayworth, singing and dancing in front of visitors cabaret. Sometimes the shadows on the walls act out scenes. Here are two gangster argue, but found a man and a woman: she smokes, he goes to her, takes off his hat, takes the hand … We need to deftly jump on these silhouettes in time to jump on the outstretched hand, then climb to the fedora, but with She jump on the right balcony.
In another episode brought jumping at shadows cast by a rotating carousel. Have to jump from one shade to another horse, right in the flight by switching between a world of shadows and the world of objects, because it shares the silhouettes very real, made of brick and cement wall. But the most powerful in terms of design time – ironic part in a mini-performance on the stage of the local children’s theater. Dawn turns into a little princess, jumping over bumps and branches, running away from rushing at her stones, whitefish through traps and rescues from the dragon shadow hapless prince.
Gloomy childhood
The game has all the hallmarks of a typical indie (although the final stages of development and has picked up publishing Focus Home Interactive): it is the original, but sometimes short and unfinished. Heroine periodically falls through texture and inconvenient administration, coupled with the habit of girls stumble on every corner converted passage in some areas the real test for the nerves.
Outlet becomes the story and atmosphere – it is in the plane of the script and its associated metaphors, and not on the walls played the main game of light and shadow. And although there is all the necessary elements of film noir – dark streets, rock beauty, cigarettes and gangsters, – Contrast is not about that. She is a bright children’s perception of the world, his family – and how it shadow over the world of adults with divorces, scandals, a paternity test and “Sunday” popes.
Real protagonist of the game – not leggy Dawn and nine years old Didi. Didi’s parents live apart. Dad really wants to return, but he is mired in debt. Mom dancing cabaret and dad does not want to see. One evening Didi selected from his bedroom and sent to the city to help his father to arrange the performance of famous illusionist – is his only chance to get money and get back to my baby.
As in Papo & Yo Brief information about the game Cope with adult problems child’s imagination helps. Didi invented himself a girlfriend, leggy Dawn (so, in any case, it seems at first), and that solves all these puzzles, jumping and moving into a world of shadows and back only to pave the way for the girl. She opens her door down bridges and repairing amusement park that armed with pistols and batons “investors” gave his father money to show a visiting magician.
Didi we do not control, she run scripts and writers. Funny girl babbles, asks us to do this or that, parents overhears conversations (all adult scenes, of course, kidding silhouettes on the walls) and learns what to know she has not followed. When you see a child’s eyes, watching as her dad beat gangsters or Mom teaches a gun at him, all these puzzles and original mechanics fade into the shadows. It is clear that the authors are playing on the edge and use illegal essentially tricks the brink but they still do not pass, and simply offer to think about how the world is seen through the eyes of a child.
Contrast – indeed a real game of contrasts. Between light and shadow, between the world of children and the adult world, between the idea and its implementation. Yes, it is not all perfect: not tested banal game, crooked management makes teeth grinding irritation and puzzles and their solutions at the end begin to repeat. But there is a major Contrast: unique mechanics, atmosphere, style and story that raises serious questions and chills to the bone.
