Rogers (2010) describes what he refers to as the Triangle of
Weirdness in his book Level Up! The Guide
to Great Video Game Design. Essentially, only one of three things can be
weird without the risk of alienating one’s audience: the characters, the setting, or the events
that take place in the experience (p. 44).
The small, independently-made game Space Funeral defies this rule, with the entirety of the game
consisting of events, places, and characters that could only be described as
weird.
Starting Space Funeral for the
first time, the player is greeted by the start menu which has three options:
blood, blood, and blood. This bizarre opening scene sets the mood for the remaining
experience. The player begins the game by being unceremoniously dumped into
Scum Village, the entirety of which is immediately recognized as foreign to the
player’s mind. The grass and water are far off-color. The houses are all large,
bleeding heads, and everyone there to talk to usually serve to just make one
more confused, with the exception of clarifying which direction to proceed in.
Over time, the events that take place around the player have the strange effect
of making the whole situation less understandable and yet oddly more directed.
Your only ally, Leg Horse (a horse made out of legs), is the sole emotional
anchor one builds over the course of the game and serves to get the player more
involved in the plot beyond the vague advice that two of you are destined to
take on the same quest. As the climax of the epic comes to a close, everything
makes sense in a fashion, though not in a traditional sense.
Playing through
the game, thinking of it more as an experience instead of as a normal video
game lets one see where the game shines. The simple aesthetics are far from the
high-quality graphics we see today, and even the sprites from back during the
SNES’s time span. Yet their ability to unsettle and build a world, no matter
how strange, contributes to the experience presented to the player. The writing
adds to this feeling, building a feeling of unease yet being totally functional
. The licensed music and somewhat outdated pop culture references create
familiarity and yet a surreal detachment. The overall experience reaches a
point of clarity in the end, hinting at the overall theme that ties the
entirety of itself together. Despite thoroughly defying the notion of building
on anything normal and known, Space
Funeral shows that interesting new experiences can come from departing from
that which is familiar.
Rogers, S. (2010) Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game
Design. U.K: Wiley & Sons.
I could not help but be reminded of Earthbound and the other games in the Mother series while playing this game. The setting does take place on Earth, but the bizarre atmosphere created by the strange characters, recognizable and atmospheric music, and many odd events give the games a similar feeling to Space Funeral. I found that Earthbound was a more bizarre game because while it presents weird characters, settings, and events, it also presents normal counterparts throughout the game. It seems that it is because of these factors, and the experience they create that Earthbound has become recognized as a cult classic.
ReplyDeleteThis game seems interesting, but is certainly nothing I would normally play. However, the way you described the settings and gameplay makes the game seem very odd and I feel I would try it out just to see it for myself. I have honestly not played many games that were too out of the ordinary (besides maybe Super Smash Brothers) so it’s no wonder a game like this went under my radar, but I do agree that the game mechanics that are strange or out of the ordinary are what make some games interesting and fun to play.
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