http://geekandsundry.com/the-disturbing-delight-that-is-nidhogg-iis-art/

Who wants some Ice Cream?

From The Developer of Nidhogg comes: Flywrench

Flywrench

The indie game market is filled with super hard core skill based games. Just look at Boson X and Super Hexagon. There is a sea of them and Flywrench fits in perfectly. The Nidhogg developer, Messhoff, is well known for creating beautiful games using abstract art styles.

This project has been around for years and was even…

Don’t forget about animators, the arrangers of emotion and teachers of our visual literacy. In this regard, the language of movies and television applies to video games. Batman’s cape  in the Arkham series is pleasing to watch because it twirls and wavers in reaction to movement. The Wanderer’s labored gait in Shadow of the Colossus emulates the weighted feel of his controls, conveying his weariness as he trudges towards the insurmountable. Journey’s deviant scarves reveal a world of awesome physics: wind, gravity, graceful sand-skipping velocity.

It’s very easy to festishize such details, especially in an industry that showboats real-time, dynamic movement through publicized tech demos. Yet this practice of exclaiming “Check out how real this looks!” keeps realism at arm’s length, especially in a medium that mostly achieves as much through touch. It isn’t important that a game’s physics accurately reflect our world, but honor the senses we would use to understand any world we may find ourselves in. Sure, scarves and capes flow a little more ideally in games, but that we can move the avatars attached to them, feeling their own distinct physics and properties, and have that flow change  in reaction to our inputs appeases some kind of logical exchange games make through player initiative. The game functions on at least three levels here: it informs us of the nature of the character we’re occupying, the world that character’s moving in, and the sense of being between them. Factor in environment, narrative trappings, or cultural references, and you’re working with a dense context you may have never experienced before; a new way of learning. Needless to say, our current batch of shiny new boxes are tools, their context any designer’s wish. When anchored in purpose, every conspicuously bouncy tendril of hair on your avatar’s scalp matters. Its invested nature is only unlocked through your move.

Mark Essen’s fencing simulator Nidhogg refocuses our eyes on the root details of player-controlled animation, and how we relate to and understand contextual sensations through gameplay.

Worlds are nice and necessary in games, but those worlds is shattered if  they aren’t linked with the feel of our avatar, whose impulses are our own. Like many of the best fighting games before it, Nidhogg has its own learning curve: easy to approach, but difficult to master. Vertical strokes on the left thumbstick change the stance of your blankly pixelated duelist, reorienting the height at which he holds his sword. Horizontal pushes make him run. The B button controls jumping, while the A button dictates all other action, including stabs, sword-chucks, and basic pugilism for when you will most certainly wind up disarmed.  These simple strokes mix with simple button presses, then yield simple actions, often in one seamless combination. Visually, we see a duel that reflects the elegance of those controls, histrionic pixel blood fountains aside. Timing your moves is crucial to break past your foe and dash to the end of the map your duelist spawns facing. What this all amounts to is the thrilling orchestrations of swordplay, all masterfully conducted by you.

Nidhogg offers the basics we expect from artistic portrayals of dueling, even if they’re rarely implemented well in games. Twists, rolls, parries, and plunges are all felt and depicted with appropriate flair. On a bridge I hurled a sword at my opponent, who readied to deflect as it spun towards him. This gave me just enough time to barrel at him, grabbing a stray sword from one of our past battles mid-roll, and stick him as I unfurled. It was dirty and of the moment. Shakespearean, if only for the post-modern kids. There’s no plotting or story in Nidhogg. The war songs are written in detailed moments like this.

AI or human, your opponents will be capable of similar tricks. Nidhogg won’t make you angry so much as it will make you balk at your computer with the incredulity of an 18th century French aristocrat. The better I grew at the game, the more determined I’d get during matches, feelings manifested in criticism of my opponents’ shoddy form if not my own. Essen even treats traditional game logic as an opportunity to explore the emotions of combat. Since swords remain on stage while felled avatars disappear and respawn, fights can easily become a flopsweat of sword-flinging and low kicks, making otherwise “skilled” duelists seem clumsy and desperate. This is honest design, allowing for the frantic moves bloodsports often resort to.

Nidhogg is dreamlike, a generator of liquid movements synchronous with our cultural imagining of “dignified” swordplay. It sets scenes we get to compose and inhabit. We create the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, and the cocksure foolishness of jumping around our enemies like giddy idiots. That such a breakneck dynamic is best rendered in flat pixels speaks to the fidelity of the game’s pure, vibrant movements. It also reveals what conscious movements speaks back.