Contrast by Compulsion - Having fun with an imaginary friend, PAX 2013
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,074 words · ~5 min read
0:00
lineus Tech tips coverage of PS 2013 is brought to you by Western Digital Intel
0:04
and steel series hey guys we're here at the Indie Mega Booth checking on a game called contrast where you play as the
0:09
imaginary friend of a little girl named Dee what more can you tell me about this
0:12
game uh so contrast is a puzzle platform
0:16
it is set in the 1920s in a film Noir inspired Universe uh and as you said you
0:21
play the imaginary friend of a little girl and you have a very special power
0:25
as all imaginary friends do and what you can do is you can run around in 3D and
0:30
then run up to a wall if you have a shadow on the wall you can shift into it
0:34
so you can then become your Shadow you can platform in 2D and jump on all of
0:39
the other shadows in the environment that's great really interesting mechanic
0:43
and as you can see in all the art style of this game Shadows are very prominent
0:46
so you play as Dawn the imaginary friend and you're jumping all these Shadows but
0:51
you're the uh DD will actually follow
0:54
you as you're playing around as Dawn sometimes get in your way sometimes apologize can you can you explain the
0:58
relationship between the two girls yeah absolutely so Didi is like your guide
1:03
and companion essentially it's just kind of the reason for your existence um so a
1:07
lot of the time what you're doing is you know following her instructions I think
1:11
I can turn this on
1:14
now I think you're going to need to get that Beacon
1:18
working get up horsey yea
1:22
woo uh and she's going through the world and sometimes she'll say hey I can't get
1:26
across here but but you can with your Shadow powers and so uh that's kind of
1:31
how the relationship Works however sometimes as you said um I can't do
1:35
anything or you can't do anything as Dawn until DD helps you so in one area
1:39
she actually holds up a stick in 3D and the shadow projected on the wall you
1:43
need to jump on that uh to to make your way through the puzzle that's cool and
1:47
we've seen a lot of that in the gameplay of people playing that we've seen so far
1:50
now why does this imaginary friend exist well uh it's all tied to the obviously
1:55
the story of the game um uh Dawn exists
1:59
uh because uh Dei spends a lot of time alone uh and she's invented this friend
2:04
uh to help her cope with some really difficult family life um so much like uh
2:08
ailia from pan Labyrinth who invinc an imaginary friend to deal with actually
2:13
the rise of fascism in Spain um it's uh not quite so dark it's about her parents
2:18
splitting up um and Dei desperately wanting to get them back together so so
2:24
spends her mom spends a lot of time away her dad has left so she creates this uh
2:29
imaginary friend to cope that's it's really interesting a lot deeper story
2:32
than we seen in a lot of video games what was the inspiration for this uh
2:36
well very uh very broadly speaking our studio uh Studio head and creative
2:41
director was uh a a really recent single
2:44
dad at the time so he's got he's got two young daughters and he wanted to talk
2:48
about their experience of you know what he went through in his life and tell a
2:53
story from their perspective that's really cool it's it's nice to see
2:56
personal experience going into a game because I feel like that will make a much more Eng engaging experience
3:00
because when it's based on something that someone has actually felt it always
3:04
feels a lot more easy to connect to than when someone makes a game that's based
3:08
on something someone else has felt not themselves well exactly and I mean it's
3:12
kind of hard to uh put yourself and your you know your personal experiences into
3:16
a game where you're uh playing the savior of the Galaxy or something like
3:20
that so um when you've got real life experience you can draw on that it makes
3:24
it makes actually telling things um easier and more realistic yeah is there
3:29
any other game mechanics you'd like to go over um look there's there's one
3:33
other game mechanic um that you can activate uh which is a dash ability and
3:37
that's really just to kind of move through space in again a different way
3:41
adds a bit of complexity to the uh platforming environment uh but you can
3:44
also you can move lights in contrast and whenever you move a light uh you can
3:48
shift into Shadow wherever that light hits um you can also move objects in 3D
3:54
which change the shadow landscape uh and
3:58
sometimes you can move um points sources of light so like an actual light bulb
4:01
which cast Shadows everywhere and when you move that obviously it changes the
4:05
entire Shadow landscape that that you're running on cool to reference to
4:09
something you said earlier where it's hard to make it personally relatable when you're saving the universe you
4:13
might not be saving the universe but you might be saving DD's own personal little
4:17
universe so if that's something you're interested in you should definitely check out contrast how would someone be
4:21
able to acquire this game okay so uh contrast is uh coming out on the PC uh
4:27
the PS3 the PS4 and the Box 360 uh
4:31
around about middle of November so we haven't haven't announced the launch
4:35
date yet but that'll be coming in the next few weeks sounds good I'd prefer it
4:39
was ready when it was ready anyway so that's good to hear if you want to check
4:42
out contrast if you you should definitely check it out if you want to see the rest of our packs content you
4:46
should definitely check that out too and the way you can do that is by subscribing to L's Tech tips