Habezai-Fekri, J., 2020. jasmin-habezai-fekri-1-1. [image] Available at: <https://80.lv/articles/bird-house-working-on-a-stylized-landscape-in-ue4/> [Accessed 24 February 2021].

- WEEK 2 -

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Experimental Game

Unravel

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Electronic Arts Inc., 2021. unravel-game-wallpapers-featured-image.jpg.adapt.crop16x9.1455w. [image] Available at: <https://media.contentapi.ea.com/content/dam/eacom/unravel/images/2017/07/unravel-game-wallpapers-2.jpg> [Accessed 25 February 2021].

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Unravel is a pastoral physics-based platformer game developed by a small Swedish company named Coldwood Interactive and published in February 2016 by Electronic Arts for the platforms – PC, Xbox One, PS4. It is an emotional and creative experience, centered on a tiny character made of wool, with a big heart and adventurous mind. The yarn in Unravel becomes the symbol of love and broken boundaries, also the main lead where everything stays connected. 
The main goal is about reaching out and create new bounds and physically making it through the end of each level without unraveling. There are physics-based puzzles to solve while playing and plenty of mechanics to interact with. 

Let us begin with the experimental Art Style and the aesthetic of this adventurous puzzle game. To break down the whole creativity of this beautiful empathy spirit of the game, I will cover the whole concept idea and how Art and creativity are in each component of the gameplay such as levels, environments, music, etc. 

The whole story is based on this tiny little character called Yarny and how he creates his path around the small minimalistic details in the Swedish countryside nature. The whole idea in the mind of the creative director Martin, came when he was on a comp with his family. The main character has been created only with several materials he had in himself. Then, he started playing around in nature with the small doll. Experimenting with the atmosphere, minimalism, environment, different positions of the character, and so on. There are not many games these days that represent the love, memories, pain of broken boundaries and even telling the story only through atmosphere, tone, aesthetic, and music.  

The music helped the developers to find the voice of the game. The experimentation comes in how each part of all the levels has mood, tone and shows the different emotions of Yarny. 
Recreating beautiful floral landscapes which are showing so much effort in the detail is experimental. For example, Yarny needs to accomplish different goals using his basic mechanics, so when he is in danger, he can use different elements such as rocks, wood sticks, even a little bike to help him to climb to parts of the map where he will be able to collect yarn for himself. 

The Art style in the levels is the illusion of exploring the natural world from the perspective of the main character. Because the camera's view of the foreground forces the player to focus on the small and beautiful things inside it. Also, experimental approach to a level and gameplay because it presents this 3D game in 2D perspective. The main character approaches every complicated task walking only straight forward as in a 2D game, but, the environment, character, and overall style are 3D. 

Overall, the way the game perverse complex emotional responses through the use of nature and nostalgia, making the game a sincere and warm-hearted experimental adventure. The story is told without words, but the places that Yarny and the player visits are full of visual stories which can be understood only because of the experimentation with the Art and Aesthetic.