Unravel

   Unravel is a puzzle platform video game developed by Coldwood Interactive and published by Electronic Arts. It was announced on 15 June 2015 and released in February 2016 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows. The game centres on Yarny, a small anthropomorphic creature made of yarn whom the player navigates through the environment, utilising the unraveling yarn which makes up Yarny to solve puzzles, avoid dangerous creatures, and traverse obstacles.

   Although developer Coldwood's previous works received unfavourable critical reception, Unravel reportedly showed enough promise for EA's DICE to arrange a publishing deal with EA. Many would have remembered the game's developer and creative director, Martin Sahlin, presenting the game back at EA's E3 2015 conference. What however made it all so memorable was the dear man's incredibly nervous but still excited presentation, having "reacted on-stage appearance like most of us would: with shaking hands and a warbling voice." This presentation was met with a positive reception from the conference's audience, and from outside audiences as well. Following the announcement, Sahlin himself became the focus of well-circulated appreciative posts and fan art on social media website such as Twitter and Tumblr. 

   If you haven't seen it for yourself just yet, be prepared to "Awww..." your heart out (Though, I wish I was more coherent in my presentations as he was):

   The game itself, especially its aesthetic, was also well received after its announcement. I mean these gifs don't even do its beauty justice. The game did however also drew comparisons to Limbo (Most possibly due to the fact that they are both puzzle platform video games, but other than that, they are both pretty different if you truly had the chance to properly play the both of them for yourself) and Sony's LittleBigPlanet . The game's backgrounds and puzzles are inspired by the landscape of Umeå, Sweden; Sahlin drew inspiration for the game after creating a Yarny doll out of tire wire and yarn during a family camping trip in northern Sweden (Which was also mentioned in the video above). Sahlin has elaborated, "We live in the sticks. It's a very small town, very far north, close to the Arctic circle. There's not a lot of people, but a whole lot of countryside. I wanted to share some of that, some of the places that I love. I think you don't really see enough of that in video games. You tend to see more fantastical stuff."

   And in addition to its design, the game runs on Sony's PhyreEngine, which has been adopted by several game studios and has been used in over 90 published titles (Such as Disgaea 4: A promise Unforgotten, Amy and all of thatgamecompany's games)

   ... And what do I have to say about all of this? Needless to say, I found incredibly huge appeal in this game's aesthetic and thought it to be one of the most breathtaking games that I have seen in a long, long time. Remembering back to my COP3 dissertation and my look into acting in animation in video games, I really felt that Unravel was able to make you emphasise with its adorable silent protagonist. He has a really simply backstory when it comes down to it, but its adorable design and incredibly endearing animation almost immediately makes you want it to remain safe throughout the game. Which isn't possible, seeing that its a puzzle platform and all, so one needs to ready themselves for when they accidentally kill the poor guy during certain challenging puzzles.

   Like many others, the game had caught my interest when I had first seen Martin Sahlin's presentation. Not only memorable because of how nervously he had gone about talking about it, but also for the fact that so much love and passion had been put into the idea itself. As he mentioned what it was that had inspired this idea in the first place (That being family and happy memories), you just know that this would be a game that would be born out of pure love, and that it would have so, so much potential to be what it ought to be.

   While I am never necessarily a part of the subjective arguments that have been held by gamers over indie video games (Heck, I haven't even had the chance to watch Indie Game the Movie just yet) and studios, seeing Coldwood Interactive finally receiving such a positive reception for this game after their past failures signifies something pretty important for all us designers. You really have to make sure that there's real love put into whatever you're working on to meet true success (Also I know that I used the word love about 5 times in the past two paragraphs, shush).