One downside with unfathomable and unspeakable horrors in video games, proper, is that they’re designed by individuals. Oh the human mind can do bizarre and terrible, little doubt, however it’s unhealthy at issues it will possibly’t itself grasp. So I’m fairly into how newly-announced roguelikelike action-platformer Source Of Madness makes use of machine studying and procedural technology to spit out its “Lovecraftian” ranges and monsters, which do have a satisfying weirdness to them. A bit like in case you let Google DeepDream munch up a load of canines and landscapes then spit them again out right into a game.
When I first noticed the trailer right now, I did suppose that it had that telltale garbling of photos put via a neural community – and never simply the eyes blinking all around the our bodies of some critters. Checking the monitoring gadgets positioned across the RPS treehouse, what I truly mentioned was “I quite like that it looks like it’s got fucked up by Google Deepmind?”
Source Of Madness is an action-platformer travelling via procedurally-generated ranges and utilizing magic to zap procedurally-generated baddies. The game attracts from H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horror, with bits just like the misplaced metropolis of R’lyeh. But additionally, y’know, it’s overrun by issues which truly are unspeakable, horrible jumbles of limbs and heads that flail and stumble. They should not lifeforms constructed for this world. That’s what I need from cosmic horror relatively than yet one more monster with tentacles on its face. Dunno about the way it performs however I’ve wished before for extra games to make use of hallucinating computer systems for bizarre artwork, and right here that is.
Source Of Madness is coming via Steam in 2021. It will probably be on change too.
Don’t get me mistaken, I’m nonetheless effectively up for hand-designed weirdlife. The surreal critters in the new Eternal Cylinder trailer right now absolutely flip my lid.
Whatever you name it, hit our E3 2020 tag for extra from this summer season’s blast of gaming bulletins, trailers, and miscellaneous advertising. Our E3 stream schedule will let you know what to observe and when.
