CHENNAI: The Game Awards are the Academy Awards of the videogame industry, which grant reputation to the most popular games across genres and consoles. This year saw the fan favourite Overwatch winning the ‘Game of The Year’ title, along with Unch-arted, Titanfall, Doom and other mainstream games. Pokemon GO, too, was crowned as the best Family game and the best mobile/handheld game, for 2016.
Playdead’s ‘Inside’ was a surprising nominee, and won the award for best Art Direction. Famed for creating the atmospheric mobile game “Limbo”, they outdid itself in the immersive environment of Inside, which doesn’t fall into a genre, but can be called a “haunting experience”.
The light and shadow play, the sound of the footsteps on damp grass and concrete alike, and the realistic physics of the game gives it a dream-like feel.
The no-break movement of the player, like a film shot in a single take — gives a sense of urgency and mindfulness of time. The puzzles too, manage to scratch the grey cells quite a bit. The game goes to show that a story can be experienced in the complete absence of dialogues and cutscenes, which are now typical of all videogames.
The rest of the awards were bagged by Dishonored 2, Witcher 3, and Doom amongst others which are also extensions of existing popular franchises.
And amongst these, ‘That Dragon, Cancer’ won a well deserved Game for Impact award. The game has more third person dialogues than character movement, better music than in-game controls. It expands the scope of videogames — they successfully manage to tell us an explorative story of the boy’s journey through cancer from snippets of conversation from friends and family (based on true events). The game elucidates the journey on a metaphorical level through its dream sequences. The creator, Ryan Green accepted the award, talking about the power of games to show “not just who we want to be, but who we are.”
Like Inside, TDC can be finished in 2-3 hours, but makes a lasting impact. The growing strength of indie developers has continued to challenge the perception and quality of videogames.
(This economics graduate spends her leisure time preparing for the zombie apocalypse)
Anusha Ganapathi @quaffle_waffle