Feels like a very phoned-in adventure game that could've easily been more experimental and less goal-oriented, since the main attraction is clearly the Naohisa Inoue-inspired world. Ideally experienced through a series of gifs and screenshots.
Absolutely delightful "Myst but not bullshit" game using Naohisa Inoue's fantastical paintings as a source material. It's short, it's devoid of challenge, it controls exactly as clunky as you'd expect from a first-person Playstation game without analog controls. If you said it's not really even a game at all I don't know I'd have a compelling counterargument.
But I also had a smile on my face the entire goddamn time I played it. Sometimes you just gotta let the vibes take over and have a good ass time. You making friends with dinosaurs in whatever game you love? Didn't think so. And I'd publicly post my social security number on the internet for one of the megezo plushes they made for this game.
To be a little less jokey in tone for half a second: Iblard: Laputa no Kaeru Machi's overarching story of self-doubt as physical manifestations you must acknowledge but dismiss kind of bowled me over a little bit. We'll just say that it hits close to home and leave it at that. Maybe if that's not your default headspace the game won't resonate with you in the way it did me. I don't know.
If I had to give any points of reference for this game, think LSD Dream Emulator if it had structure. Or, of course, any of the other System Sacom games like Mansion of Hidden Souls, but instead of weird (dour) it's weird (whimsical).
This game rocks, it's an all-time favorite, I sincerely wish we existed in a world where more games made me feel the way I did playing through this one.
Could do without the full-screen flashing endemic to the game's main point of friction, however. Luckily you can manipulate the game enough for it to not happen too badly.
But I also had a smile on my face the entire goddamn time I played it. Sometimes you just gotta let the vibes take over and have a good ass time. You making friends with dinosaurs in whatever game you love? Didn't think so. And I'd publicly post my social security number on the internet for one of the megezo plushes they made for this game.
To be a little less jokey in tone for half a second: Iblard: Laputa no Kaeru Machi's overarching story of self-doubt as physical manifestations you must acknowledge but dismiss kind of bowled me over a little bit. We'll just say that it hits close to home and leave it at that. Maybe if that's not your default headspace the game won't resonate with you in the way it did me. I don't know.
If I had to give any points of reference for this game, think LSD Dream Emulator if it had structure. Or, of course, any of the other System Sacom games like Mansion of Hidden Souls, but instead of weird (dour) it's weird (whimsical).
This game rocks, it's an all-time favorite, I sincerely wish we existed in a world where more games made me feel the way I did playing through this one.
Could do without the full-screen flashing endemic to the game's main point of friction, however. Luckily you can manipulate the game enough for it to not happen too badly.
Video gamists have a nasty habit of forcing intensely literal parameters on works that present themselves in vague or abstract ways. In my experience with these kinds of people, it comes from a place of truly and authentically appreciating the work, but not having the imagination to accept that art can serve something other than a comprehensive series of tangible events. I always presumed this was largely on the fault of video game players, but this adaptation of Inoue's paintings proves that developers can be just as bereft of imagination as well. What a shame.
iblard
the screen at the bowling alley when you get a strike
cute, but just barely qualifies as a game
Iblard, the city of hatching LaPuta?! Wow, that's messed up, Sony!
A game based on the fantasy world, "Iblard", of Inoue Naohisa. He has a bunch of "Natural Encyclopedias" (https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%82%A4%E3%83%90%E3%83%A9%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89%E5%8D%9A%E7%89%A9%E8%AA%8C-%E4%BA%95%E4%B8%8A-%E7%9B%B4%E4%B9%85/dp/4906268587) of Iblard, featuring many of his paintings from the 70s-present day, with little poetic descriptions of the things or places in the scene. I've know there's a game set in this world for a while, but never got around to playing it, and...
... sadly, some things are better in their original medium. The paintings are fun because they have a game-like spatial composition to it, their descriptions are "random" in that we see bits and pieces of Iblard (such as the cone-like Laputa, the trains, etc) , described in a way that's fun to imagine.
The game, instead, ties a bunch of these visual motifs into a game in a way that feels a little awkward. The game misunderstands how the wonder of Iblard works in its original medium, instead creating this 'assorted bag' of what amount to references to Iblard. The story involves a boy sucked into a picture book of Iblard, he's apparently trapped there but can do something regarding creating a "Laputa" (the flying saucer thing in the cover) to escape. As he goes along he meets some characters that pop up in the Iblard manga.
It's indeed cool, in theory, to explore and see places that the Iblard paintings and manga feature, but at some point in between the simple Myst-like puzzles and clunky 1st-person movement, the game feels like an awkward disservice to Inoue's paintings. Occasionally you literally see a painting from one of his art books, with a description that is sometimes the same as the artbooks themselves, offering info about the world. That's a neat approach, I guess, not much different from the way item lore functions in Dark Souls.
The spaces in the game are boring to walk around, occasionally you can tilt your camera or see over a small vista to get a nice sense of place, but honestly compared to the paintings I don't think this game does much visually... perhaps some games are better unplayed...
In some ways I wish this game waited a few years to be made. While I'm hesitant to say 'more graphics = better!' I think a few more years of better 3D controls and visual practices could have really helped out here. Of course, granted that they get rid of the terrible game design... enjoying Iblard's paintings is very much about vibing with and imagining yourself there, so in that sense I think a game similar to My Summer Vacation (Boku no Natsuyasumi), Attack of the Friday Monsters could work really well with the setting, depending on how willing the painter would be with letting a team write their own stories into the world.
Lastly, while I wasn't personally a fan of the music, it did resemble some of the Japanese ambient/new age/environmental music that is being uploaded to YouTube a lot nowadays, so it's worth checking out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuiq93gh0lk
... sadly, some things are better in their original medium. The paintings are fun because they have a game-like spatial composition to it, their descriptions are "random" in that we see bits and pieces of Iblard (such as the cone-like Laputa, the trains, etc) , described in a way that's fun to imagine.
The game, instead, ties a bunch of these visual motifs into a game in a way that feels a little awkward. The game misunderstands how the wonder of Iblard works in its original medium, instead creating this 'assorted bag' of what amount to references to Iblard. The story involves a boy sucked into a picture book of Iblard, he's apparently trapped there but can do something regarding creating a "Laputa" (the flying saucer thing in the cover) to escape. As he goes along he meets some characters that pop up in the Iblard manga.
It's indeed cool, in theory, to explore and see places that the Iblard paintings and manga feature, but at some point in between the simple Myst-like puzzles and clunky 1st-person movement, the game feels like an awkward disservice to Inoue's paintings. Occasionally you literally see a painting from one of his art books, with a description that is sometimes the same as the artbooks themselves, offering info about the world. That's a neat approach, I guess, not much different from the way item lore functions in Dark Souls.
The spaces in the game are boring to walk around, occasionally you can tilt your camera or see over a small vista to get a nice sense of place, but honestly compared to the paintings I don't think this game does much visually... perhaps some games are better unplayed...
In some ways I wish this game waited a few years to be made. While I'm hesitant to say 'more graphics = better!' I think a few more years of better 3D controls and visual practices could have really helped out here. Of course, granted that they get rid of the terrible game design... enjoying Iblard's paintings is very much about vibing with and imagining yourself there, so in that sense I think a game similar to My Summer Vacation (Boku no Natsuyasumi), Attack of the Friday Monsters could work really well with the setting, depending on how willing the painter would be with letting a team write their own stories into the world.
Lastly, while I wasn't personally a fan of the music, it did resemble some of the Japanese ambient/new age/environmental music that is being uploaded to YouTube a lot nowadays, so it's worth checking out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuiq93gh0lk