“Places” is a walking simulator developed by Jarnolv where players can walk around and explore 3D worlds full of hand drawn, atmospheric landscapes. This is an independent project that resonates with a target audience who appreciates art. I played the game on a web browser, although Linux and Windows versions are available to download as well.
“How does walking tell the story?”
When you’re walking through an art museum, you may wonder at your own pace to admire paintings and read about the artists behind them. In the context of an art museum, walking serves you as a tool to get closer to a painting to admire its craft and learn more about the context behind the painting. In short, walking tells a story by empowering people to explore the world and create their own narratives.
In the context of “Places”, you walk around and view the world through a first-person camera and are accompanied by nothing but the ambiance of your own movement and the nature around you. At the start of the game, players are met with a simple set of hand drawn instructions for how to navigate the world. This set of instructions are the only directions given to the player and the only interaction they have with the other entity in the game: the game’s creator, Jarnolv. While a disembodied interaction, the hand drawn quality of the game instructions and the landscapes gives players a peek into the world of an artist. The open-ended aspect of the game encourages players to explore and hop between different landscapes, leaving breathing room for players to take in the art at their own pace and consider the motivations of the artist behind the world. Similar to that of an art museum, players are encouraged to admire the small details of the landscape painting environments. However, unlike art museums where paintings and accompanied with artist context, “Places” doesn’t supply any biographical or contextual information about the landscapes to the player, perhaps to encourage them to craft their own narrative about the art and the artist.
Analysis & Ethics:
“Places” stood out to me as a unique way of combining technology with hand drawn art, two mediums that are often in tension with each other given the rise of generative AI art. Given that this is an independent project with limited resources, Jarnolv chooses to develop each landscape as a standalone “sketch” that allows the game to cleverly limit the scope and size of each landscape. Additionally, the landscapes are crafted through Jarnolv’s hand drawn 2D assets that are placed in the 3D world as representations of paintings. After taking a look at their sketch blog, it’s clear to see that Jarnolv has a background in drawing and landscape painting, so the choice to include 2D assets instead of 3D assets with painted textures could be a way to directly bridge the technical capacities of creating video games with the creative qualities of drawing. As a cartoonist and computer programmer who’s not a big fan of 3D modeling, I deeply resonate with this game design choice.
A side note about Jarnolv’s use of color and composition, it’s beautiful! Their background as an artist definitely lends itself to strategically using color to draw players to walk in certain directions towards more interesting and dynamic parts of the landscape. The attached screenshot in Sketch 2 is a great example of this.
Given the game’s painterly landscapes and open-ended exploration, it emphasizes a dynamic model to create immersive aesthetic experiences for the player to discover new worlds. Repetitive actions or motions such as walking creates a meditative environment for players to turn off their brain for a bit and enjoy the aesthetic experience of each sketch environment. Jarnolv’s choice to exclusively feature nature landscapes also contributes to the environmental storytelling of “Spaces”, implicitly encouraging players to slow down and enjoy the beauty of nature. The nature landscape imagery and the use of grounded ambiance sound design creates an evocative space to situate each landscape sketch and draw on the beauty of nature.
“Places” is a huge jump from the violent games we played during the section. While the RPG game I played encouraged people to not commit violence but made it very challenging to do so by embedding violent actions with every player decision, “Places” doesn’t give violence as an option to players at all. The only thing you can do is walk, and it’s near impossible to commit violence like that in the peaceful environments featured in “Places”. The exclusion of violence emphasizes the player’s role as a passive observer in the world and pushes them to explore without purpose. It’s also an intentional game design choice on Jarnolv’s part: if you don’t want players to burn down the forest landscapes, don’t give them the option to find matches and lighters.
To conclude: here’s some beautiful screenshots of the game that I liked:
