This game continues to intrigue me. There’s a number ofreasons for it, however, as with most games I am entranced by, it’s the atmosphere that gets me. Although the term is growing cliched, Love has a very painterly look, largely from the smudgy coloured grass and trees, or the often glowing ‘fog’ that muffles the landscape to soften it.
It’s so easy to be sucked into the game while drifting around the world, you see a strange, almost artificial landscape, and on closer inspection, see it as a settlement you helped create a week ago. You see a bizarre creation on a plateau high above, but with no way to reach it, it remains a mystery.
As a statement about architecture, the game succeeds by questioning how design could move into the Wiki style ‘user-creates’ field. With players able to modify the settlements at will, they grow organically, and interestingly, almost act as a caricature of the post-modern movement. As a settlement begins, purely functional elements are the first to appear, simply to keep the village from being overrun. Settlements almost exclusively become four high walls, with ‘tokens’ (the game’s resources) arranged in neat blocks within these walls. Once survival is no longer the main goal, players start the aesthetic improvements, which to many means adding ornamentation, or retrofitting ‘trends’ into parts of the village. Since players generally work on one section individually, the settlement becomes an eclectic mix of ideas, sometimes remaining unfinished.
Perhaps more soon…
