The CrossingBambi Meets Pong: A Tone Poem | Submitted by costik on Sat, 11/03/2007 - 05:14. |
Most games aspire either to thud-and-blunder or cuteness -- or, as with Zelda, sometimes both at once. It's exceedingly rare to find a game you might legitimately characterize as, well -- a tone poem.
In The Crossing, the screen is filled with a beautifully lit forest crossing. Deer spring nobly from left to right across the screen, but at screen middle is a chasm. Left to their own devices, they will plunge, sadly, to their deaths.
Looking for a multimillion dollar 3D big-budget extravaganza from a major publisher? Boy, have you come to the wrong place. A lot of the graphics in Cute Knight are scans of line sketches, and most of the rest are anime-inspired Illustrator drawings. The gameplay itself is pretty simple, too--you choose a place for your character to go and some actions for her to perform, and your stats are updated as a result.
And yet somehow you find yourself drawn into her story--and want to drive it to something like a happy ending. In other words, Cute Knight quickly creates a sense of emotional engagement that's lacking in far more expensively-developed and commercial titles.
