Journey

Journey - thatgamecompany(2013)

It's funny... I talk about this game a lot, people must get fed up with me talking about it all the time! The most unfortunate thing is I haven't actually had a chance to play this game because my PS3 broke a few years ago. I've watched enough videos and interviews from Jenova Chen, Robin Hunicke and Kellee Santiago to know enough about the game to understand it and know what it's about... I just haven't yet had the chance to experience it which sucks!

Despite not having played the game it still manages to amaze me. The narrative is told through wonderful artwork and audio with no dialogue whatsoever leaving the story up to interpretation which is a powerful way of telling a story in my opinion. Sometimes having your own idea of what's going on in the story is a lot more enjoyable than finding it out in black and white. 

I love what Journey did with the multiplayer too. They used subtractive game design and ended up with no way too communicate between players, nope, not even players PSN name; they were a complete stranger which draws back to my last post about instantly thinking of Journey when seeing the topic 'Strangers in game'. 

thatgamecompany have inspired me as a game designer to think about games differently. Games which are driven by emotion, grip the player and give me a rememberable experience. This is why I'm loving the experimental games which are coming out just now like Gone Home and The Stanley Parable. 

I'll end it there, cheers!

Gavin