#surreal
#surreal
by Amr (@siegarettes)
If Shape of the World was an, open chill out session, then Anamorphine is its tonal complement. Taking place in a series of intimate, even claustrophobic spaces, it explores the emotional world of Tyler and Elena, a couple dealing with trauma and depression.
Anamorphine makes clear from the go it takes its subject matter very seriously. It opens with a content warning, giving players not only the option to skip the most upsetting scene, but also the option for a more detailed content warning containing spoilers for it. It’s an admirable approach that seems almost obvious in hindsight, and allows people to engage with the game on their own terms.
Which is good, since Anamorphine is a confident study in using space to communicate emotional states. There’s not a single spoken word in its entire run time. Instead it mixes the familiar with abstract, distorting otherwise everyday spaces into reflections of the characters’ mental worlds.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
[TRANSCRIPT BELOW]
Vaporwave often celebrates the commercial aesthetic–the highly polished corporate art, turned kitsch by time and changing tastes. It’s both a reclamation of, and a celebration of, art as a capitalist tool.
Celestial Hacker Girl Jessica draws from the other side of vaporwave’s turn of the century obsession. It’s sincere and positive, almost naive, in the way the early internet felt. It evokes feeling of a space constructed by young people with newfound access to the world and new tools to express themselves. It’s like something you’d make with a trial of Jasc Paintshop Pro and some basic modelling software–using every available brush and filter to create the most maximalist expression of an emotion.
And it’s brilliant.
