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While playing the remake of classic JRPG Walk Over My Corpse on the PSP, I couldn’t help but be dazzled by its traditional Japanese “Sumi-e” art style. Sumi-e, for those of you who don’t know, is a kind of painting where an artist uses nothing but black ink, brush and rice paper to create a watercolour of the “soul” of its subject.
For a bunch of itinerant warriors chasing after a sentient, demonic weapon all over the medieval world, the characters of Namco’s Soulcalibur franchise have always looked exceptionally striking. There’s been lots of layers and detailing to the outfits that Taki, Cervantes and Xianghua have rocked over the years.
Ever since it popped up this morning, people have been quick to say that Aaron Bishop’s Lords Of Uberdark looks a lot like Minecraft. The fact Minecraft’s creator helped spread the word may have contributed to that.
While Lords Of Uberdark (which at the moment is little more than some alpha code and ideas) is in the same mine/craft guise as…Minecraft, there’s one key difference: it’s not based around blocks or tiles. It is instead free-form, your ability to edit the world being far more natural than something which ends up looking like a giant LEGO set.
I’m also digging the art style, the bright colours and stark lines invoking memories of Okami.
More than schoolgirls, salarymen or neon lights, when video games want to evoke Japan, they pick one thing above the rest: cherry blossoms, or “sakura”, as they are called in Japanese.
