'Drawn: Dark Flight' Aims to Marry Art and Gameplay

We recently got a chance to sit down with designers Chris Campbell and Brian Thompson to take a look at 'Drawn: Dark Flight', their forthcoming sequel to Big Fish Games' adventure-puzzle game 'Drawn: The Painted Tower'.

For those unfamiliar with the series, the game's lineage can be traced back to atmospheric adventure titles like 'Myst,' whose gameplay requires that players roam through a strange environment solving puzzles. The game takes place in the realm of Stonebriar, where the player is tasked with saving the rightful heir to the Stonebriar throne, a little girl named Iris, who can make her art real.

According to the Art Director, Thompson, the concept of art is an inherent aspect of gameplay. For instance, one puzzle requires players to manipulate a series of waterways and viaducts in order to properly mix several colors of paint. The approach makes sense, considering Iris' art-based powers.

This art-becoming-reality aspect is expounded upon in the game's puzzles, which often involve entering into the world of a painting in order to gain objects needed in the "real" world. The game is rife with these dizzying layers of artistic realms, giving its puzzles a feeling of intricate depth. What the game combines is the point-and-click puzzle narratives of old-school Sierra games (like 'King's Quest') with more recent, emotionally resonant titles.

The games' landscapes draw from a visual aesthetic that reminds us of Henry Selick (director of 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' and 'Coraline'). It's not exactly ground-breaking, but it is executed with panache. 'Dark Flight' incorporates a wide and varied number of additional art styles into its puzzles, many of which involve entering worlds through paintings and books. These landscapes invoke papercraft, felt-board and pop-up book styles, as well as Disney-esque elements, all of which work together to provide a refreshing change of pace from the game's "regular" world.

As of late, we've seen many games with distinctive art styles, from entries in the PixelJunk series to 'Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game'. For smaller developers, a unique visual style is not only a way to stand out amongst a crowd of photo-realistic multi-million dollar titles, but it's also a natural response to budgetary limitations. 'Drawn: Dark Flight' takes this approach, and furthers it by making the art itself an intrinsic part of the game design.

'Drawn' is as literal an approach to the concept of "game-as-art" as one can get. While the incorporation of art into the game is done well, it doesn't provide a revolutionary experience. One could just as easily imagine musical tropes being used in its place. Still, in an age of experiential gaming platforms, it's hard to be as drawn into a game world like this one, comprised of relatively static backdrops. (Granted, these are the limitations of budget-conscious games, and of the adventure genre, itself.)

Producer Campbell says, "My personal goal for 'Drawn' was to bring back the adventure game genre." His enthusiasm for the project clearly comes from a love of the medium. He speaks fondly of classic LucasArts and Sierra games, citing the latter's 'King's Quest III' as his favorite. With the gaming industry so intent on courting and appeasing a casual audience, however, you seldom see games with the punishing difficulty of Sierra adventures (with their obscure, difficult puzzles, frequent player deaths and requisite, prodigious saving). 'Drawn,' then, aims to balance the needs of the casual gamer and the adventure lover's lust for hair-pulling frustration. Puzzles can be skipped entirely, and an ever-present hint system is available to keep gamers from getting stuck. These concessions are logical in a market dominated by casual gaming; even so-called "hardcore" games are a far cry from even their 10-year-old predecessors, wherein a loss of lives and continues meant a permanent "Game Over."

While 'Drawn' relies on the tropes of a sadly outdated genre, we can't fault it for not reinventing the wheel. The apparent care that has gone into the project is praiseworthy. (One imagines that it would have been easier to produce a mindless, artistically vapid game for casual audiences instead.) While 'art-meets-video-games' is becoming a bit of a selling point for modern producers, there is a long way to go before old styles, mediums and themes will truly take a life of their own.

'Drawn: Dark Flight' will be released August 31st, and will be available both online (at Big Fish Game's website) and at brick-and-mortar stores (Walmart).

Tags: Adventure games, AdventureGames, Big Fish Games, BigFishGames, Casual Games, CasualGames, games as art, GamesAsArt, top, Video Games, VideoGames