Review – PC – Star Sky
Mårten Jonsson | Released 05.09.2011
There was a recent news article floating around about “Video Games now Considered Art”. Now, personally, there are some questionable artistic content in say, Call of Duty, but even Movies can be considered Art and still have their craptastic turns like Revenge of the Fallen.
Then there are games that really feel like they have some level of artistic quality to them. They are interesting and original and evoke a bit of emotional reaction that isn’t just straight adrenaline. Star Sky, a recent indie title out of Sweeden is that sort of title. It’s seems odd to call this a game considering it’s general lack of game like qualities. There’s no score, there’s no competitiveness, there’s no killing of anything (as far as I can tell). It’s mostly just a quiet simple narrative told through the basic imagery on screen.
The execution really does make the experience here though. The basic silhouette graphic style adds a lot of mystery. It’s all very crisp and well designed too which makes it clear what you’re looking at despite any real depth. The sound definitely helps with the atmosphere presented here as well. There’s a lot of natural outdoorsy sounds, crickets chirping, occasionally there’s rain fall. The key is that there are slight cues, mostly in the form of a light flourish of music to indicate that “this is an area where something could happen”.
These events however are dependent on what you’ve done previously, for example, you won’t gain your companion follower if you didn’t previously gather the rose. But then you may not WANT to pick her up. There are about 20 different scenarios to come across and unlock and it’ll take multiple plays to get through it. This isn’t quite as tricky as it seems though considering that a single play through lasts maybe 5-10 minutes.
Overall though, it IS short and it IS fairly basic in game play. The experience is well executed and it’s certainly a good example of “Video Games as Art”. It also helps that it’s a $2.99 game, so it falls very much in the realm of impulse buy, especially if it looks at all interesting.
