Screenshot Saturday Sundays: Letting the sun set on windmills, androids and dusty old towers
Screenshot Saturday: Sunset Edition
Screenshot Saturday! That time of week where game developers and hobbyists subject their unfinished works for public scrutiny. This week: Watching the evening roll in over storm-rattled windmills, windswept towers, and Louisiana androids. Oh, and one mean-as-hell duck.
With Dennis banging down the office walls all weekend, what better way to begin our breeze through Screenshot Saturday than with these storm-wracked windmills from Dutch artist Joost Eggermont.
Perhaps it's the wind outside, but I can practically feel my monitor shaking from the threatening gales of Eggermont's bold clip. You may recognise the artist's name from Mooncharmer abstract lunar dance's. While these harsh, almost monochromatic mills are an apparent break from Eggermont's past work (via official site), it's clear he's been skewing towards more melancholy palettes for some time. I'm excited to pop on my anorak and watch him see this storm through.
At least the weather's not quite so cruel over on Minute of Islands.
If I had my way, I'd have every game set on a warm autumn's eve, bold orange sunlight scattering long shadows across the frame. Minute of Islands popped up on Screenshot Saturday Sundays under Jay's watch, but this time we're given a more contemplative, exploratory look at Studio Fizbin's hand-drawn world. The poetic platform-puzzler is still due for a release sometime later this year.
You've probably got it now, but quiet sunsets are something of a theme this week. Sticking to those tracks, Norco: Faraway Lights is selling some utterly striking petrochemical bleakness.
I've never been much of a point n' click buff. I did, however, pick up Primordia for a long night's train ride across Finland nearly a decade back. I fell hard for its isolating android tune, and Norco seems to be hitting so many of those notes in the more grounded marshlands of a smog-fuelled cyberpunk Louisiana. The machines are fantastical, but this is very much a place rooted in real history.
It's also looking, well, less obnoxiously "neon" than it did back when Brendy looked at an early demo a few years back. He didn't play it, mind. It seems an aversion to all things 80s is something the list goblin and I share. Pink is out - grime is back, baby.
Finally: here's a duck with a gun.
Scrolling back through Zac Lucarelli's feed, Duck With A Gun just looks... fun? Messy, broken fun, for sure, but there's enough table-flipping, slow motion physics nonsense to give it an identity beyond "what if that horrible goose was packing heat?".