Cool that you were so inspired by it.

I didn't get as much out of the game itself, but I liked the idea you describe. Almost reminds me of Back to the Cubeture, which had a great visual style though was a bit too puzzle-y for my tastes.

[replace the polygons with something entirely different]

I just remembered a game that is (was?) in development on the tigsource forums. It doesn't seem like the devlog has been updated in months, but the first video posted of it I really enjoyed. Somehow I found its style very evocative and immersive even though it's very simple. Maybe it was the music. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2OqQ6-ESp4

Wow, I do like how evocative and immersive it is despite the seeming crudeness of the style. It's interesting to compare with these with How Bees Work - I found the style in the video to be much more evocative, though only a few things were different, like the different ground textures and heights and the slight fog effect as objects recede into the distance.

Well, I guess I'm a sort of modernist by saying this, but maybe you should try to find the equivalent of "sketchy" in whichever rendering technique you're using. In general I think we should try and find new forms of beauty in this new medium.

Funny to hear that, coming from someone who hates pixels so much.

But I agree. My approach would not be to use some post-processing effect to mimic the appearance of sketchy painting on top of a polygonal rendering, but to replace the polygons with something entirely different. Like this.

I want to try using a probabilistic rendering technique that is not built on triangles, but on networks of connected lines and flows of particles. I just don't know how it would work yet.

It evoked quite a feeling of delight and surprise from me.

Funny how looking at something upside-down (the photographic image of a TV on the floor) can make it seem so much more real.

Hey, you're the nanodoc guy, right? I recognize your name from Flixel...

It looks like you've been making some cool stuff. I don't understand how Becoming Animal works exactly, but it looks very intriguing.

I've also seen that Biocosm video before, and it gave me a lot to think about when it comes to physics-based interactions and artificial life games. Maybe the gameplay doesn't work so well in that instance, but I think there's still plenty of potential in that area.

I especially like sketchy paintings where you can see the brushstrokes.

Could I make a notgame with a sketchy painted style?

Playing Forest by increpare was an excellent notgame experience, by the way.

I found it incredibly relaxing. In an earlier comment, I erroneously mentioned that it got my "delta" waves going, but actually I meant to say "alpha" waves. It really got my alpha waves going.

And it fits all the criteria of a notgame.

I was just thinking - maybe I should look at stage sets for theater and dance for inspiration, rather than movies and games. They are often minimal and abstract, but at the same time, physical and embodied, often symbolic, but not graphic.

Could be interesting.

The more that is implied, the more your imagination fills in the missing pieces. Our imaginations are way better at imagining horror than when games/movies simply show it to us. The anticipation of what is out there in the dark and fog is the what is frightening. This draws you in better than highly detailed next-gen graphics. This isn't something you want in every interactive environment but they are well suited to horror.

Yes, exactly. The well-known comic (or graphic novel, if you prefer) Maus is another good example of using simple, non-realistic renderings to increase immersion in a serious story (cartoon anthropomorphic animals in the Holocaust, in fact).

Anyway, I'm downloading those games now...

I personally don't see "notgames" as a category at all. It's a design method for me.

Thank you for this reminder. Perhaps we should save this quote for such reminding purposes in the future?

I just came across a couple Flash games with interesting photograph-based styles: Record Tripping and 4 Differences.

Not to hijack this thread, but the groWorld game is currently not under development. We just made a few prototypes and helped design a concept with Foam. There are no plans to continue this project yet.

Darn! That project would have been so cool...

Wow, I actually saw your Fuji piece earlier but forgot about it! I really like the procedural landscape.

I've done a bit of procedural environment stuff myself, though not much yet: Spring Rain

Also, I'm really excited about groWorld now, Tale of Tales! I love procedural stuff, and plants, and ecology, and interesting multiplayer experiences and I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with. I don't know what you are making exactly, but it reminds of the Jungle episode of Planet Earth - I thought it would be great to make a game where you are a plant competing for sunlight in a clearing opened up by a fallen tree.

Update:

I just saw your blog post In the beginning... about beginning from the blank screen, the empty void. I really like this because I have thought about this same sort of thing, and its opposite, the white glowing field of possibility.

I wrote more about it here, on the development blog for my (yet-to-be-created) game Dejeweled. For Dejeweled (and some other projects) I am using the white glowing field approach.

There's a very, very old word for pixel art: mosaic.

I've recently formed the opinion that pixel art enchants so many people because it's essentially a mosaic.  I'm sure there are books that go into great detail about why a mosaic is so appealing.

Yes, yes! I had almost forgotten about that point. Pixel art isn't new. Mosaic isn't new. Mosaic doesn't have to be retro. Maybe I should see if I can find some books about why mosaics are appealing, I think they'd be fun to read...

Another option for art style is rotoscoping.  That's what I've been experimenting with a lot with lately.  Just trace over an image in Illustrator.  I personally want to explore pixel-art-like aesthetics using vector graphics, so I've been leaving the vectors aliased.  I would love to make 3d pixel art someday.

Yeah, and I forgot about rotoscoping. I know IvoryDrive has done some nice stuff with that in games like Five Differences.

And 3D pixel art - like MineCraft maps!

My artist brontosaurus is not only good at 2D pixel art, he's also made some really cool 3D MineCraft worlds out of variously textured cubes. Seeing the spaces he created in MineCraft is what convinced me of his skill in level design.

The reason why pixel art is often used for art games is because the games are experiments.  That means they have cheaper production values, and because aesthetic quality is so important, as you say, pixel art gives the most bang for its buck.  The highest quality for the least effort.

Definitely. Which is why you see it so much in art games.

I can understand Michael's insistence on differentiating the notgames movement visually here, but it is important to recognize that for many indies, pixel art is the path of least resistance and the choice to avoid it is not a decision to be taken lightly (nor mixed up with anyone's personal distaste for the style).

Thank you, Michael. Reading your thoughts on the Heavy Rain trailer helped me get a better idea of what you have in mind for notgames, too. That's the kind of writing we could probably put up on a blog.

So yes, this is why we are here. I'm excited now.

And I like the "man gets out of bed in the morning" theme too.

I just read an interesting article on Gamasutra: The Uneasy Merging of Narrative and Gameplay.

In particular it talks about the limitations of combining gameplay and narrative, and it's interesting because I think we can get around a lot of these by just dropping the "gameplay" part of it while still using an interactive format.

I'll get my imagination working on some Cambrian-esque graphics then! Thanks for forcing my brain open on this issue...