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The beautiful Eastern European folktales behind Forest of Sleep

Forest of Sleep, the procedural adventure inspired by oral storytelling and the latest brainchild from the creator of Proteus (2013), looks more like a children’s book than a videogame. Early screenshots unapologetically resemble artwork, illustrated with bold borders and thick lines and no UI in sight. In an interview with the Forest of Sleep team, producer Hannah Nicklin talks to artist and animator Nicolai Troshinsky about his illustration background, and connection to the Eastern European folklore that permeates their game. a slower style, filled with tiny gestures Troshinsky discusses how he and Ed Key, the co-creator of Forest of Sleep, tossed…

Lieve Oma
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Look out for this beautiful tribute to sweet, caring grandmothers

“My grandmother is probably the most important person ever to me,” writes illustrator and game maker Florian Veltman. This text appears on the website for his latest game—it’s to be called Lieve Oma, the Dutch for “Dear Grandmother”—which Veltman confirms to me will very much be framed as a letter to his grandmother. But rather than have us stare at an inked page, Lieve Oma gives us an autumnal forest to explore, in which we play a young girl who goes mushroom picking with her grandmother. Lieve Oma originally started out dedicated to the people in our lives who give us…

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Where’s Waldo? finally gets interactive in this videogame

Where’s Waldo? (1987) has stepped out of the past and into a super stylistic new game. Hidden Folks is the latest from game designer Adriaan de Jongh, in which you can relive the eyestrain of days past in a grown-up version of the classic find-the-character game. This new project comes in the wake of de Jong’s previous efforts, the quirky titles Fingle (2012) and Bounden (2014), produced with the now-defunct Game Oven. This time he’s teamed up with illustrator Sylvian Tegroeg to create something entirely different.   The premise is simple and differs little from its striped-shirt predecessor: find the hidden character in a crazy…