World Design in A Story About My Uncle – Who Doesn’t Want to Live in a Floating City?
By Suzanne Verras
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I have a thing for cities in weird places. Maybe it’s, because I watched a lot of fantasy and sci-fi movies when I was a kid. I grew up with Star Wars and Lord of The Rings and also The Matrix. Underwater towns, villages in trees, cities in caves and even floating cities, I loved them all. A Story About My Uncle has its own share of inventive towns which you definitely have to see. If you want to know more about the gameplay and story, go watch and read Nathaniels review, cause I ain’t got time for that. I’m here to show off the beautiful world design and the cities in particular.
Most of A Story About My Uncle is played in caves and the first village you find is also build inside one of those caves. When you enter the second level of the game, you come into a world filled with magical lights and glowing rocks. When I first saw it, I thought to myself “This would be an awesome place to build a little village.” Mere seconds later I discovered that there was indeed a little town inside this massive cavern (the third level is called The Village, so I should have seen that one coming).
The village is populated by frog people and their houses appear to be made out of trash. There are little huts made out of scrap wood decorated with little lights and colorful pillows. It’s all pretty primitive and it seems that the villagers build everything from the garbage that was shot through space with the garbage disposal that brought you here as well. The little shacks and markets are built on top of flattened stalagmites that rise up from the seemingly bottomless cave floor. Bridges connect the varies parts of the villages and together with roads carved in the stone the make a path to whole of the town.
The second village, called Star Haven, is way more advanced than the first. The second villages uses strange powers crystals that you find and use throughout the game as a source of power. The first village did not dare use the crystals, because they were supposed to be sacred. Star Haven uses the crystals to power machines and make the giant rocks on which it is built, float high up in the air. Picture the city of Colombia in Bioshock Infinite, but without all the racism and drama.
The houses here are made out or bricks and are more sturdy than the shacks of the cave villagers. There are hardly any bridges in the villages, transport is mostly done by crystal powered zeppelins. One of the best things about Star Haven is that it’s in the open air. You can see the beautiful night sky above the little towers, filled with stars and orange and purple clouds.
A Story About My Uncle definitely has more to offer then magical cities on floating rocks or hiding in big caverns, but world design is definitely one of the most awesome things.
If you want to know more about A Story About My Uncle then you’re in luck! It’s the game of the month for our June ’14 “Not Crowdfunded, But…” feature, which is where we look at one non-crowdfunded title per month. We’re also giving away a copy of it, along with 9 other games, in our Steam Giveaway, which runs until July 7th.
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[facebook][tweet][Google][pinterest][follow id=”Cliqist” size=”large” count=”true” ] [author image=”http://cliqist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/suzanne.jpg” ]Suzanne Verras is a freelance writer and a university student from Leiden, The Netherlands. She is a video game enthusiast, but also loves movies and art. She has her own video game, film and art blog called Miss Lily Blogs where she posts all kinds of articles as well as her Let’s Plays. Her favorite games include Bioshock, Myst, Ratchet and Clank and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. In the future she hopes to be writing full-time and one of her dreams is to sell her artwork one day. You can follow her on Twitter: MissLilyTweets. [/author]
