Alien Flora games: Strawberry Cubes
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[/su_animate] [su_animate type=“fadeInUp” delay=“1”]From the 12th to the 14th May (i.e. next Thursday to Saturday) I am putting on a small exhibition of art games at the Buzz gallery in Rotherham for three days. It’s an informal little event that I’m doing thanks to Rotherham Open Arts Renaissance, which has made some town-centre space available to members for short residency-like activities. One of the games I’m showing is Strawberry Cubes by Loren Schmidt. [/su_animate][su_animate type=“fadeInDown” delay=“1”][gallery link=“none” size=“large” columns=“1” ids=“1895,1901,1894” orderby=“rand”][/su_animate] [su_animate type=“fadeInLeft”]
[/su_animate] [su_animate type=“fadeInDown”]Strawberry Cubes is an experimental sandbox platformer; an unknowable alien system in a literal black box, it feels almost as experimental for the player as it is for the developer. The natural laws of our world as we know it are distorted in some cases, and altogether broken in others. A good outcome of a Strawberry Cubes playthrough is finding an area you had never seen before, but an equally good outcome is crashing the game by pushing the simulation to the boundary of its memory allocation. This game is all about surprises, natural systems that are not built for our comprehension or control. Death itself is just another destination in a world that is not particularly concerned with our own ambitions as players.That’s not to say that Strawberry Cubes is indifferent to pleasure; it is full of striking monuments, cheerful motifs and delightful little processes by which the world seems to unfold right as we pass through; is it unfolding in order to be seen by us, or is this unfolding a part of how our own tactile awareness gradually makes sense of the environment? Loren often talks about texture, and there is a way that the visual and auditory responsiveness of this game feels like shale crunching under my feet and moss bristling under my fingers. This is not a hostile wilderness, but an overgrown garden.
It was Loren who introduced me to the film Fantastic Planet, which sent me down a rabbit-hole of thinking about miniaturisation and bio-power in game design, which in turn has led me to critical studies of petting, domestication, foraging, and to the selection of games I’ve put together for Alien Flora. One of my interests in this little show is the distinction between farming and foraging. I’m interested in organisms such as mushrooms and berries that are not fully domestic in the same way as cereals, and in the patterns of engagement that seem particularly suited to foraging. Strawberry Cubes is a good example of a game that resists farming’s executive planning in favour of foraging’s open-hearted wandering.
I used to co-work with Loren Schmidt from time to time, back when they and I lived in California – we have both since moved on, exploring other places and finding home in other opportunities. Loren worked like the consummate digital artist, building processes and pushing them to their edges. They seemed to always be nurturing another strange automaton and asking it questions I never would have thought it could answer. Looking over Loren’s shoulder and getting a tour of the various experiments they had been working with in recent days was always an eye-opening experience, and Strawberry Cubes captures some of that feeling, with its multi-room layout that acts as an exhibition space in itself. You don’t quite know where you are going or why, but the more you wander, the more you get used to Loren’s way of asking the less obvious questions.[/su_animate]