![]() ![]() After reuniting with his deceased dog Sparky, he learns that the island’s volcano will soon erupt. You play as Morris Lupton, a recently deceased museum curator who spent his life discovering and displaying the history of his hometown and island, Shelmerston. I Am Dead does a great job of demonstrating the importance objects play in a person’s life through the game’s core gameplay. Anthropologists and archaeologists rely on artifacts and belongings to get a clearer understanding of past and present societies. A person’s sense of identity is tied to the objects he or she accumulated throughout life. In life, people cannot help but become attached to objects and give the objects significant, personal meeting. It has a colorful and quirky world, detailed environments and object design, and some touching moments as you listen to various characters narrate memories of their loved ones. “This game is kind of like a love letter to small, provincial British museums that we’re massive fans of,” Hogg concludes.Welcome to our latest Backlog Review, where we look at relatively recent game releases and determine whether or not they’re worthy of a playthrough.Īs a fan of the publisher Annapurna Interactive as well as a fan of Richard Hogg’s previous game, Wilmot’s Warehouse, I was excited to pick up the adventure puzzle game I Am Dead. And then there’s libraries and museums, which Hogg and Haggett frequently meet at. ![]() “They’re the sort of books that someone like Morris would read,” says Hogg. While developing I Am Dead, Haggett and Hogg drew upon their shared enthusiasm for the literary works of Patrick O’Brian, scribe of the Master and Commander books about historical naval warfare. Sort of non-descript, middle class guy in his 60s, probably quite cheerful, probably quite a fun granddad, quite an interesting guy, but at the same time doesn’t choose his own clothes, his wife chooses his clothes for him.” ![]() “The only people who do their shopping early in the morning are maybe people who’ve retired. “He’s the sort of person that you see, if you go to the supermarket in the U.K. “He was quite an elderly, fairly eccentric guy,” Haggett recalls. Morris is loosely based on Haggett’s geography teacher from back at school, a man who used to walk with his fingers tucked into the waistband of his trousers. “It’s full of anecdotes and mini-stories about people’s lives and people’s relationships with each other that I think work a lot better because they’re things we can understand and that we can relate to.” I Am Dead is set in present day in a location similar to the seaside town of Hastings, where Hogg resides. “We liked the idea of using death as a way of illuminating life.” “I remember being really into the idea of it being a game about a dead person, but not about them dying - one benchmark idea was that you wouldn’t know how they died,” says Hogg, “instead the game is about how they lived.” He adds that death is a common theme of video games, but the stories are often about that moment when someone dies and how it happened. “Occasionally people turn up in a bog or in the ice where it’s like, oh this person is this many years old and we can learn about their lives from these objects that they had with them.” He goes on to say, “We never ended up making that game, then when we came to make I Am Dead, the first thing that we had was the idea of this mechanic.” The idea came to the developers years ago when they were working on another, entirely different game, where the central idea was “somebody dead in a grave - somebody from like the Bronze age, who was thousands of years old, with all of their tools, clothing and equipment that they would have had with them,” explains Haggett. The story of the puzzle adventure game follows a deceased museum curator named Morris who sets about to explore the afterlife, a world filled with learning and discovery. “It suddenly occurred to me, wow, we’re launching a game called I Am Dead, about ghosts, kind of during Halloween season, and that’s so duplicitous because our game isn’t at all scary,” he says. It really is a game about people’s lives.”Īrtist and designer Richard Hogg chimes in with the irony that the game, which features bright colors and an inviting sense of warmth, is releasing in October, the month of Halloween. As developer Ricky Haggett recalls on the phone with The Hollywood Reporter, “It’s not really a spooky or sinister game. I Am Dead is a Colorful Game About LivingĪs the title suggests, I Am Dead does involve a dead person, but it’s not explicitly about death or dying. Hollow Ponds developer Ricky Haggett and designer Richard Hogg, both who are U.K.-based, describe the truth and meaning behind their latest offering, which just dropped on consoles. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |