"Baba Is You" would also be a game worthy of discussing here. It's a 2D block-pushing game where the rules are defined by the blocks themselves. You start by controlling a rabbit named Baba, and the titular "BABA", "IS", and "YOU" are three adjacent blocks on the screen. But if you push away the first block and replace it with "ROCK" then immediately you are in control of the rock(s) instead of the bunnies. This gets complicated fast...
@@rallicat69 I've played a lot of programming games (spacechem, automatachef, exapunks, chr147, ...) and I'm going to have to strongly disagree with this claim. Yes there's a minor programming/rules element of baba but the spatial layout usually puts a heavy restriction on the rules you are allowed to make
A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a good example for a satire of the real world. In the beginning of the book the protagonists house gets demolished to allow building a highway, a very real thing, but then the earth got destroyed for a space highway!
I liked this video so much I sent it to my mom, who is an art professor. She doesn't really play video games, but she knows I love them beyond a form of entertainment. Thanks!
@@jasonblalock4429 Yeah, I think I first learned about it from GT Live years ago. But I've never heard anyone mention it since then. Maybe I should do an LP of it to give it a little attention.
Hyperbolica is another one, where you explore non-Euclidian spaces. I loved the part where I had to serve food to customers in a restaurant whose walls met in corners that are infinitely far away, while wearing roller skates.
The comment about how Alice in wonderland being a child’s perspective of the world is fascinating and one I never thought of. In that sense little nightmares is a modern evolution of that concept.
(6:48) Funny thing about M.C Escher, he was *not* a mathematician. By his own admission, he had next to no academic understanding of the subject. He simply enjoyed exploring what were, or would turn out to be, mathematically-relevant patterns in his art, and he was exceptionally skilled at doing so
I don't think anyone would find it scary. What makes a horror movie or game scary is that they're set in the real world, and everything seems normal... until it isn't.
@@timothychinye6008 ok why is Alien f. e. scary or Dead Space for games. I think I get where you are coming from, but for me your argument falls apart pretty quickly. I could be totally wrong tho
@@timothychinye6008 I think here you are mistaken. The best kind of horror for me is the one that makes you powerless, one that takes the control you have about your own life and puts it is someone else's hands. The peak of feeling like you can't fight and thus need to run is to break the understanding of the protagonist, so much so that he reverts to a frightened primal state, as we were when we were little. We couldn't go slam the door or be passive aggressive so we did what we could cried and ran. After you turn into a child you never feel that same powerlessness as you atleast have a perception of life at a basic scale. Breaking the flow of life, being put in the seat of a baby again... that scares me just thinking about it. I think it's also the only way you'd get 100 percent of the playerbase to agree that fleeing is the best solution as you can't fathom fighting such a Lovecraftian Creature, how would you even do that? With physical 3 dimensional threats, some if not most tend to want to overcome it, from here the memes of men wanting to 1v1 bears or tigers. You CAN punch a bear, you CAN punch Jason. It's not advised and they will probably tear your head clean off but the option is on the table. Try to punch the concept of forced perspective. Try to punch something that may not even have a physical form, or if it does, you most likely don't even understand it. That, ladies, gentlemen and everything in-between, that is a RUN moment if I ever saw one.
@@KrazyKaiser It gives me Neverending Story kind of vibes. Like those old school 80s/90s movies with weird creatures and a narrator with a soothing voice.
I played a few of these in a local art museum. I think it's amazing how far the medium has progressed in just a few decades. Especially manifold garden impressed me. The first time I stood at the edge of my island, I had no idea how to cross this chasm. I just saw these tiny islands all around me. Only when I dropped an item into the depth, and it came back to me falling from above, I realized that everything I see around me is my own vantage point, just from another angle. This was such a mind blow, such a profound change in how I was able to navigate the world... it makes you think what other trivial truths you missed about, well, everything.
The alien airport run by dogs sounds like it could serve as a fun sort of Autism simulator. Trying to understand what people want or why you’re expected to do something makes me feel like an alien navigating on Earth sometimes.
Exactly what I was thinking! When I heard him talking about Alice in Wonderland I was like: "sounds a bit like autism huh" and then when he started talking about the airport and yup
I have an autism diagnosis. It don't be like that. However my inner phantasia seems applicable or at least it's elements analogous to objective reality. It's like the mental tools everyone uses to solve things in the real world, to me, are conceptual and seem much like their real world counterparts. I know. Ravings of a lunatic. I wish I could just wake up in an airport of dogs... but it ain't happening.
The more I watch your videos the more I realise we're fans of a lot of the same channels on RUclips; namely Jacob Geller and, more relevant to THIS video, Tom Scott's Technical Difficulties. (I mean, you could very well be getting these topics and talking points from elsewhere, but that's where I first heard about Acoustic Kitty and Blue Peacock). I think it's really cool how you put your own perspective on them and cross-analyse them in different ways! Awesome video as always!
Loving the shift to more personal essay content. I still love the objective synopses of fictional worlds, and I came to your channel for the spec evo in the first place, but am always excited by videos like this
Ehhhh... Antichamber is definitely its own thing and it's a massive disservice to say it directly inspired any of the games featured here. Viewfinder, for instance, was inspired by Portal, and vibes well with The Witness. Even then, it's better to accept each game as their own thing since they're all uniquely awesome.
That movie theater moment in Jazzpink kinda’ve stood out to me. Even when a work of fiction is intentionally manufactured to be as bizzare as possible, the creator themself was still able to find something from reality just as weird
Unity i believe; for how it s done: U can determine the FOV of the player using math and place planes tangeant to it When u take a picture u "grab" every scene object that falls within the boundaries delimited by the planes(=FOV) and save their position in the cone at that specific point When placing the picture, u simply place the saved view boundary in place of the new view boundaris Hope it was clear and helpful; have a great day/night
holy cow this game, these games, this video. these are the tricks and tools and powers gamespaces enable, and we have absolutely slept on as the creep toward dense foliage and algorithmically generated ray tracing and hypershadows. Those effects are beautiful, but they cannot make an experience on their own. Viewfinder explores the actual boundarylines where no other medium can perform, and for that I cherish it.
I think I understand how viewfinder works under the hood. Basically whenever you take a snapshot, the game clones the world's meshes, culled to the polaroid's camera's view frustum, and make that bundle its own scene. The camera is cloned too so that it is now independent from the player's further movements and stays still. It takes the view of this camera and renders it onto a surface (the "picture"). (Btw, the last part is how portals and mirrors are implemented too). Now you can move the picture around and the image on it stays still. When the player "places down" the picture, all meshes from the cloned scene is transformed appropriately based on the picture's orientation and cloned back into the main scene. This makes it look like nothing has changed from the player's camera view until their perspective changes. All the concepts and tricks used here are all well known and well supported by various game engines. But to combine them so creatively to achieve such a spectacular effect is a skill that most game developers can only dream of.
I don't remember all the times I tried to un-fullscreen to try to hit the like button, and then realized that I already had. I'm a fan of mind breaking, and this certainly delivered.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice has a lot of puzzle sections which rely on optical illusions or impossible geometry to solve, with the main character’s psychosis and journey into the underworld providing an in-game context
Alan Wake 2 does some of the dream world reality bending thing pretty well, Control too. Remedy Entertainment really are pushing this in the AAA world.
"An Airport for Aliens Currently run by Dogs" Me (currently on Short Term Disability, so a bit slow to process things) "Wait, what!?" That sounds like something I might want to look into once my mind's recovered from the current troubles. Good video.
I love games like these so much! Superliminal and especially Viewfinder are some of my favorite 'puzzle' games. Also I very much recommend 'There is no Game'!
VR would ruin the illusion because it gives a sense of depth so for example you can see when the object switches from something right in front your face to something in the distance despite occupying the exact same field of view.
@@noelvalenzarro Would it really? Most these are perspective illusions and those are fairly popular sculptures. Maybe b the giant pawn door in superliminal might need a slight rescaling. The rest are 3d Geometry and teleportation tricks. Viewfinder could be fun.
@@gmradio2436 The way I understand my physics, the whole reason stuff like Superliminal works is because a computer screen only portrays stuff in one way, while our eyes are a pair, making 3D perception possible. In games, the distance to an object is only comprehended by moving or by having a vague assumption as a reference from the real world. If you were to spawn in a level with no way to move, any geometry you see might as well be a 2D plane, even if you could look around by turning your character's head. So in Superliminal and Viewfinder, that is basically what's happening: When you pick up an object or a photo, it becomes fixed in place relative to your screen, making you 'unable to move around' relative to it, thus rendering it essentially 2D. And then then moment you place it down, the 3D rendering takes over again, each in its own way in each game. In Superliminal, it casts the object as far away as its 3D counterpart could possibly be, acording to your perspective, and in Viewfinder, it generates the 3D world of the foreground, while pasting the background in... well, the background, erasing anything else that would've been there. So yeah, because VR technology actually gives you _two seperate_ points of view, making everything 3D at all times, the illusion wouldn't quite work. In Superliminal, the objects 'in your hand' would have to constantly change size according to the size it would be, were you to drop it this instant, or they would have to keep the size you picked it up with, while then snapping to the actual size it becomes after placing it down, which would be rather obvious and would create clipping problems with larger objects becoming smaller. And in Viewfinder, you _would_ be able to see the actual 2D photo in front of you, as they are always a fixed size and distance from you, but the moment you place it down and generate its content into the world, you would again be able to see the jump, because you have an actual 3D perspective in VR.
@@spysoldierscout4562 Not really. Again most of these are takes on classical illusions. There are already physical models that can trick your stereoscopic vision. The implementation of a VR headset means that the margin of error is tighter for the illusion. The real magic is when you combine the classic techniques with the ability to directly change the environment. To reiterate my point. VR being "3D" don't mean much for optical illusions as many, many such illusions predate modern computers be potential centuries.
It's noteworthy that both Viewfinder and Superliminal are in part inspired by a cancelled sequel to Portal involving an Aperture Camera that could warp reality that way -- it was a very adventurous idea so it's not entirely surprisingly that it took until now, with improved graphical hardware, for anyone to create that kind of game, but I find it particularly interesting how both games take wildly different approaches to it with Superliminal having much more of a "Portal" theme with its dream-experiment framing, and Viewfinder going in an entirely different direction with its floating islands. I'd love to try both out at some point, but my computer is old and tired, like me.
Viewfinder has been incredible but I can only play a handful of minutes at a time, because it actually makes my stomach flip. But its so incredible I keep going back, and kept experimenting and exploring. So cool. I hope more people give it an opportunity, the changing art styles you can move through in an instant, its just mesmerizing.
Some clarification on project blue peacock, The chicken's weren't supposed to set off the bomb, the chickens were to act as insulation in the winter... See the idea was to plant nuclear bombs like landmines across the entire border region with the USSR so that if they every invaded they would be met with a wall of nuclear annihilation. But during the winter some of the electronics in the bomb could get damaged so they needed a way to keep the bombs warm... so they decided to build a specialized chicken coup into the bomb which would be buried... with the chickens inside. The bombs were meant to be buried as an invasion was starting I guess because they specifically tested how long chickens would survive in such conditions. :) that's all.
could've used a warning for flashing lights during chunks of the jazzpunk section. it could be seriously dangerous for someone with photosensitive epilepsy, and even though i don't have any form of epilepsy, the flashing was strong enough to start hurting my eyes.
tbh ALOT of curious archive's videos could use warnings (for flashing lights and also subject matter warnings too) at the start since theres a few vids where i ended up just watching through stuff that i know isnt good for me bc i didnt have any warning.
Yo thank you for telling me the name of Jazzpunk, I remember watching a video of someone playing through it as a child and it was such a unique game that I never really forgot it
The chicken was not the timer, the bonbs were buried with chickens to keep the crappy electronics of the era from getting frozen, the chickens were essentially living heaters for the bombs. If you want crazy stuff checkout the bird homing missiles.
the viewfinder tech is actually quite basic, some engines even come with that capability as default feature, but the execution is nothing short of miraculous.
Man so glad I found this video not sure if id found your channel by then but god do I love the Alternate physics of reality genre 🙏 I really hope people keep expanding on these games
16:00 If you want another very peculiar take on airports, I suggest a look at either edition of the TTRPG Over the Edge from Atlas Games. I won't spoil it, but the Al Amarja International Airport is one of the most memorably strange places I've run into in 50 years of roleplaying.
I love games with dream logic. They're simultaneously total nonsense and perfectly sensible. Psychonauts and Superliminal are both games where I went "ah yes, but of course" and then proceeded to solve a puzzle without any issues because if you just think about it from the perspective of a dream, the solution becomes obvious
Manifold gardens is in my top 3 of long-lasting gaming experience along withJourney and Gris. Thanks for listing the other ones, can't wait to try them!
Awesome video! Echochrome is an old PSP game that was one of the first puzzle games in which optical illusions and MC Escher esque spaces are a core mechanic of the game world
14:20 this reminds me that in minecraft you can make a redstone randomiser by using a chicken and a pressure plate. Also, pigeon homing missiles for surface/air to ship missiles
Echochrome is like these. An artist's mannequin walks along paths and your job is to move the camera around to hide gaps or make paths. If you turn the world upside down, he falls, and he can walk along a surface which was previously unreachable. It's on PSP and PS3, and one of the two sequels is on PSV.
While not AS abstract, another I love is "The Magic Circle." It's a very meta satire where the player is a beta-tester on a game that's been stuck in dev hell for over a decade, in the middle of a battle between its eternally bickering devs. Gameplay is a fun 1PP puzzle-adventure that actively encourages the player to exploit the game, focused on Frankensteining NPCs together to create a makeshift army. Plus fantastic voice acting, esp James "Rusty Venture" Urbaniak as a former 'rock star' 90s dev turned broken neurotic mess. What's neat about it, and relevant here, is that as it goes on, it actually gets more and more meta. It doesn't just break the fourth wall - it keeps finding new meta walls to smash. But I really don't want to even hint at what it does in the last third of the game.
Watching this video gave me an idea, What if there was a game with no floor? Like you are quite simply falling, the whole time, never reaching the bottom. I mean there'd obviously be more than this, Something to do while falling, But I haven't gotten that far yet.
19:37 There has also been several animated films that make you question this fact. Most of these came from Looney Tunes. For instance, in "Daffy Duck and Egghead" the hunter Egghead shoots an "audience member" who comes late to the theater and refuses to sit down. But probably the most famous example is "Duck Amuck", where Daffy Duck complains to the animator all through the film how he isn't treated with the respect a "star actor" like himself deserves. This is implying that Daffy actually acknowledges that he IS, in fact, just a hand-drawn character, and the film's director is his boss who he demands to see. This director (spoiler) turns out to be Bugs Bunny, who was animating Daffy's shenanigans on the drawing desk the whole time!🤯🖋🖌🖍
Have you looked at hyper light drifter yet? Idk if it would fit with your style of content but it might be worth checking out. I feel like a lot of people would enjoy a deep dive into the world, and emotional metaphor of the game - I know I would haha. As always love the content, keep it up man!
for a long time i tried to remember the name of Jazzpunk, lately i started to think that it was just a dream of mine when i was younger.. i was so surprised to finally find it, after almost 10 years of occasionaly remembering something like that existing but never remembering the name, thank you hahah
Areas in Persona 5 take place in “Palaces,” places in an alternate plane of reality rules by the collective unconscious, and these Palaces are created by individuals that have a distorted perspective of reality based on their corrupted desires, such as an abusive volleyball teacher viewing his school as his castle and himself as the king, a plagiarist master artist who exploits his pupils viewing his atelier as an enormous, gaudy museum, or a mob boss that sees all of Shibuya as his personal bank and the people in it as ATMs.
There's one section of The Matrix: Path of Neo that fits this description. You also have to fight ant monsters in that area. So many wrong doors and flipping of perspective it was aggravating.
I used to have a bit of an obsession with optical illusions so at about 6:48 in the video my brain just start going “MC Escher? MC Escher? He’s gonna say MC Escher isnt he”. I had a notebook I got from an art museum with one of his patterns all over it and I used it as a diary for years.
Have you played Antichamber? Was one of the first games that I thought broke all the rules I was used to in gaming before. It is still amazing. Once I figured out how to do it and that ending is just fucking amazing.
This video reminded me of some games that you should definitely check out if you haven't played! Broken Reality, Hypnospace Outlaw, and Hylics all are great in their own unique ways!
i saw the falling guy silhouette in the thumbnail and i was excited to see how the Myst series was gonna fit in. saddened to see Myst was not, in fact, even mentioned 😔 however, you did mention a couple of other games that i really liked watching play throughs of, so it was still a net positive viewing 😁
13:49 that’s not true. actually it’s because the first cat that was sent out got hit by a car and died so the project was cancelled. The cats were actually trained very well.
You can hear Curious Archive’s computer absolutely howling for help while he’s recording these games.
The archive is sadly underfunded, and cannot afford a good Ryzen 😔
Suuuush... Don't tell him...
Games that break all the rules … narrated in nasal monotone. Smh
If you listen closely you can hear
Help ME A MAD SCIENTIST is USING ME AS A SLAVE FOR ENTERTAINMENT
@marshalmarrs3269 listen closely
"Baba Is You" would also be a game worthy of discussing here. It's a 2D block-pushing game where the rules are defined by the blocks themselves. You start by controlling a rabbit named Baba, and the titular "BABA", "IS", and "YOU" are three adjacent blocks on the screen. But if you push away the first block and replace it with "ROCK" then immediately you are in control of the rock(s) instead of the bunnies. This gets complicated fast...
Make sure you push BABA and ROCK at the same time, otherwise, you will be stuck in the short gap of time when nothing IS YOU.
baba is you is just programming though, i love the game but its not super complicated its just coding
@@rallicat69 I've played a lot of programming games (spacechem, automatachef, exapunks, chr147, ...) and I'm going to have to strongly disagree with this claim. Yes there's a minor programming/rules element of baba but the spatial layout usually puts a heavy restriction on the rules you are allowed to make
@@mlahut i know creating the rules itself is the hard part in baba is you but it just doesnt fit in the same category as this video i feel.
ABSOLUTELY Baba is You
A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a good example for a satire of the real world. In the beginning of the book the protagonists house gets demolished to allow building a highway, a very real thing, but then the earth got destroyed for a space highway!
Not only that, but a space highway that is immediately rendered useless due to a newly made innovation in space travel.
Ahould have just built a killdozer
@nathanfake9163 which then was rendered useless by a ship run by restaurant mathematics
And then the main character falls and misses the ground…
And then the earth was remade, at least in the movie
I liked this video so much I sent it to my mom, who is an art professor. She doesn't really play video games, but she knows I love them beyond a form of entertainment. Thanks!
I bet she’d like playing that cocchi game.
She likely found it fascinating and such . But she still wants you to get a real job .
Did she liked it?
I’m surprised Antichamber wasn’t mentioned. It’s whole premise was disobeying conventional rules to find the way forward.
I think The Magic Circle would have been a good contender, as well.
Antichamber seems like the precursor to all of these games, I'm also shocked it wasn't mentioned
@@suicune2001 Holy shit, someone else who knows about The Magic Circle. It's my favorite game of the 10s that no one else seems to have heard of.
@@jasonblalock4429 Yeah, I think I first learned about it from GT Live years ago. But I've never heard anyone mention it since then. Maybe I should do an LP of it to give it a little attention.
Hyperbolica is another one, where you explore non-Euclidian spaces. I loved the part where I had to serve food to customers in a restaurant whose walls met in corners that are infinitely far away, while wearing roller skates.
its a shame you didnt talk about the stanley parable, it definitely fits into the category of games/worlds that break all the rules
too also be fair theres already dozens upon dozens of videos about Stanley.
I'm only hoping that there instead will be a specially dedicated episode to this masterpiece!
@@Particelomen that may be why CA didnt cover it in this video, or at least that's what in hoping
Same but replace the stanley parable with baba is you.
I thought he already talked about Stanley's Parable
It’s a good day when Curious Archive uploads
It always is
fax
It's a good day when people don't regurtitate shitty copy pastes for likes
@@HerohammerStudios bro who hurt you man why you mad bro ???
It’s a good day, a lot of my favorite monthly RUclipsrs made today a great day
like usual, the ammount of imaginative power a single video of this channel can give me, can hardly be matched.
The comment about how Alice in wonderland being a child’s perspective of the world is fascinating and one I never thought of. In that sense little nightmares is a modern evolution of that concept.
(6:48) Funny thing about M.C Escher, he was *not* a mathematician. By his own admission, he had next to no academic understanding of the subject. He simply enjoyed exploring what were, or would turn out to be, mathematically-relevant patterns in his art, and he was exceptionally skilled at doing so
Imagine a horror game based on this
I don't think anyone would find it scary.
What makes a horror movie or game scary is that they're set in the real world, and everything seems normal... until it isn't.
@@timothychinye6008 ok why is Alien f. e. scary or Dead Space for games. I think I get where you are coming from, but for me your argument falls apart pretty quickly. I could be totally wrong tho
@@timothychinye6008 I think here you are mistaken. The best kind of horror for me is the one that makes you powerless, one that takes the control you have about your own life and puts it is someone else's hands. The peak of feeling like you can't fight and thus need to run is to break the understanding of the protagonist, so much so that he reverts to a frightened primal state, as we were when we were little. We couldn't go slam the door or be passive aggressive so we did what we could cried and ran. After you turn into a child you never feel that same powerlessness as you atleast have a perception of life at a basic scale. Breaking the flow of life, being put in the seat of a baby again... that scares me just thinking about it.
I think it's also the only way you'd get 100 percent of the playerbase to agree that fleeing is the best solution as you can't fathom fighting such a Lovecraftian Creature, how would you even do that? With physical 3 dimensional threats, some if not most tend to want to overcome it, from here the memes of men wanting to 1v1 bears or tigers. You CAN punch a bear, you CAN punch Jason. It's not advised and they will probably tear your head clean off but the option is on the table. Try to punch the concept of forced perspective. Try to punch something that may not even have a physical form, or if it does, you most likely don't even understand it. That, ladies, gentlemen and everything in-between, that is a RUN moment if I ever saw one.
No.
@@timothychinye6008it's not about realism, it's about having stakes. Stakes high enough that you care, and a scenario where you stress over it.
Please make a a documentary video about The Eternal Cylinder! The speculative evolution in that game is crazy as hell! 👽
YES. I remember this was requested a while back!
GUYS GET THIS A LOT OF LIKES
YES I RECENTLY BEAT THAT GAME AND IT IS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
God I need to play that game. Got it on steam when it was on sale but haven't committed the time to play it all.
@@KrazyKaiser It gives me Neverending Story kind of vibes. Like those old school 80s/90s movies with weird creatures and a narrator with a soothing voice.
that transition between Viewfinder and Superliminal at 2:56 was beautiful
This jump scared the shit out of me
I played a few of these in a local art museum. I think it's amazing how far the medium has progressed in just a few decades.
Especially manifold garden impressed me. The first time I stood at the edge of my island, I had no idea how to cross this chasm. I just saw these tiny islands all around me. Only when I dropped an item into the depth, and it came back to me falling from above, I realized that everything I see around me is my own vantage point, just from another angle.
This was such a mind blow, such a profound change in how I was able to navigate the world... it makes you think what other trivial truths you missed about, well, everything.
The alien airport run by dogs sounds like it could serve as a fun sort of Autism simulator. Trying to understand what people want or why you’re expected to do something makes me feel like an alien navigating on Earth sometimes.
Exactly what I was thinking! When I heard him talking about Alice in Wonderland I was like: "sounds a bit like autism huh" and then when he started talking about the airport and yup
I was thinking about how much this whole video just sounds like my view of the world and this comment made me remeber I'm autistic
I have an autism diagnosis. It don't be like that. However my inner phantasia seems applicable or at least it's elements analogous to objective reality. It's like the mental tools everyone uses to solve things in the real world, to me, are conceptual and seem much like their real world counterparts. I know. Ravings of a lunatic. I wish I could just wake up in an airport of dogs... but it ain't happening.
Btw, nice to meet a few others on the spectrum in such an obscure place 😊. Kinda how it always happens
You may be artistic.
The more I watch your videos the more I realise we're fans of a lot of the same channels on RUclips; namely Jacob Geller and, more relevant to THIS video, Tom Scott's Technical Difficulties. (I mean, you could very well be getting these topics and talking points from elsewhere, but that's where I first heard about Acoustic Kitty and Blue Peacock). I think it's really cool how you put your own perspective on them and cross-analyse them in different ways! Awesome video as always!
Loving the shift to more personal essay content. I still love the objective synopses of fictional worlds, and I came to your channel for the spec evo in the first place, but am always excited by videos like this
feels like antichamber paved the way for a lot of these perspective games. totally worth a play if you havent yet
Ehhhh... Antichamber is definitely its own thing and it's a massive disservice to say it directly inspired any of the games featured here. Viewfinder, for instance, was inspired by Portal, and vibes well with The Witness. Even then, it's better to accept each game as their own thing since they're all uniquely awesome.
That movie theater moment in Jazzpink kinda’ve stood out to me. Even when a work of fiction is intentionally manufactured to be as bizzare as possible, the creator themself was still able to find something from reality just as weird
It's trippy stuff like this which is why I sleep and dream so much.
Funny. Long work hours is why I sleep so much
@@HerohammerStudios Why is that funny?
@@IAmFromTheYear is trippy stuff the same as long work hours? I suppose it's just really trips people up.
@@IAmFromTheYearit's not, his comment was displaying irony.
Funny, depression is why I sleep and dream so much.
Viewfinder feels like someone just really wanted to flex their coding skills and whatever engine it used.
Unity i believe; for how it s done:
U can determine the FOV of the player using math and place planes tangeant to it
When u take a picture u "grab" every scene object that falls within the boundaries delimited by the planes(=FOV) and save their position in the cone at that specific point
When placing the picture, u simply place the saved view boundary in place of the new view boundaris
Hope it was clear and helpful; have a great day/night
So many moments in this video were jaw dropping--just incredible. And funny. Thank you, CA, for an amazing video!
holy cow this game, these games, this video. these are the tricks and tools and powers gamespaces enable, and we have absolutely slept on as the creep toward dense foliage and algorithmically generated ray tracing and hypershadows. Those effects are beautiful, but they cannot make an experience on their own. Viewfinder explores the actual boundarylines where no other medium can perform, and for that I cherish it.
I think I understand how viewfinder works under the hood.
Basically whenever you take a snapshot, the game clones the world's meshes, culled to the polaroid's camera's view frustum, and make that bundle its own scene. The camera is cloned too so that it is now independent from the player's further movements and stays still. It takes the view of this camera and renders it onto a surface (the "picture"). (Btw, the last part is how portals and mirrors are implemented too). Now you can move the picture around and the image on it stays still. When the player "places down" the picture, all meshes from the cloned scene is transformed appropriately based on the picture's orientation and cloned back into the main scene. This makes it look like nothing has changed from the player's camera view until their perspective changes.
All the concepts and tricks used here are all well known and well supported by various game engines. But to combine them so creatively to achieve such a spectacular effect is a skill that most game developers can only dream of.
That is what i assumed too tho u explained it much more clearly that I did; congrats mate :)
no. wrong. stahp. you are embarrassing yourself
I don't remember all the times I tried to un-fullscreen to try to hit the like button, and then realized that I already had. I'm a fan of mind breaking, and this certainly delivered.
Curious Archive makes one of the best game documentaries I've ever seen, good explanations good showcases, and good gameplay.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice has a lot of puzzle sections which rely on optical illusions or impossible geometry to solve, with the main character’s psychosis and journey into the underworld providing an in-game context
It's really awesome to see just how much Curious Archive has progressed.
All of this is like if Zach King made a game
I think these types of games are by far my favorite conceptually and we need more reality bending games.
Alan Wake 2 does some of the dream world reality bending thing pretty well, Control too. Remedy Entertainment really are pushing this in the AAA world.
I am so excited for ENA: Dream BBQ to come out, I imagine it will fit well with these
"An Airport for Aliens Currently run by Dogs"
Me (currently on Short Term Disability, so a bit slow to process things) "Wait, what!?"
That sounds like something I might want to look into once my mind's recovered from the current troubles.
Good video.
Monument Valley is probably one of my favorite games that fits into this category of rule-breaking/perception changing
I was looking for this comment
Keep up the good work!
I love games like these so much! Superliminal and especially Viewfinder are some of my favorite 'puzzle' games. Also I very much recommend 'There is no Game'!
Some of these in VR might be wonderfully maddening.
VR would ruin the illusion because it gives a sense of depth so for example you can see when the object switches from something right in front your face to something in the distance despite occupying the exact same field of view.
@@noelvalenzarro Would it really? Most these are perspective illusions and those are fairly popular sculptures. Maybe b the giant pawn door in superliminal might need a slight rescaling. The rest are 3d Geometry and teleportation tricks. Viewfinder could be fun.
@@gmradio2436
The way I understand my physics, the whole reason stuff like Superliminal works is because a computer screen only portrays stuff in one way, while our eyes are a pair, making 3D perception possible. In games, the distance to an object is only comprehended by moving or by having a vague assumption as a reference from the real world. If you were to spawn in a level with no way to move, any geometry you see might as well be a 2D plane, even if you could look around by turning your character's head.
So in Superliminal and Viewfinder, that is basically what's happening: When you pick up an object or a photo, it becomes fixed in place relative to your screen, making you 'unable to move around' relative to it, thus rendering it essentially 2D. And then then moment you place it down, the 3D rendering takes over again, each in its own way in each game. In Superliminal, it casts the object as far away as its 3D counterpart could possibly be, acording to your perspective, and in Viewfinder, it generates the 3D world of the foreground, while pasting the background in... well, the background, erasing anything else that would've been there.
So yeah, because VR technology actually gives you _two seperate_ points of view, making everything 3D at all times, the illusion wouldn't quite work. In Superliminal, the objects 'in your hand' would have to constantly change size according to the size it would be, were you to drop it this instant, or they would have to keep the size you picked it up with, while then snapping to the actual size it becomes after placing it down, which would be rather obvious and would create clipping problems with larger objects becoming smaller. And in Viewfinder, you _would_ be able to see the actual 2D photo in front of you, as they are always a fixed size and distance from you, but the moment you place it down and generate its content into the world, you would again be able to see the jump, because you have an actual 3D perspective in VR.
@@spysoldierscout4562 Not really. Again most of these are takes on classical illusions. There are already physical models that can trick your stereoscopic vision. The implementation of a VR headset means that the margin of error is tighter for the illusion. The real magic is when you combine the classic techniques with the ability to directly change the environment.
To reiterate my point. VR being "3D" don't mean much for optical illusions as many, many such illusions predate modern computers be potential centuries.
It's noteworthy that both Viewfinder and Superliminal are in part inspired by a cancelled sequel to Portal involving an Aperture Camera that could warp reality that way -- it was a very adventurous idea so it's not entirely surprisingly that it took until now, with improved graphical hardware, for anyone to create that kind of game, but I find it particularly interesting how both games take wildly different approaches to it with Superliminal having much more of a "Portal" theme with its dream-experiment framing, and Viewfinder going in an entirely different direction with its floating islands. I'd love to try both out at some point, but my computer is old and tired, like me.
@Fiewfinder: As dev and 3d animator its MAGIC for me the sudden bool operation of very complex objects at runtime without lag is very MAGIC...
What I learned today: programmers go crazy if exposed to airports.
Would love to see Curious Archive’s take on Outer Wilds.. It's really awesome to see just how much Curious Archive has progressed..
Viewfinder has been incredible but I can only play a handful of minutes at a time, because it actually makes my stomach flip. But its so incredible I keep going back, and kept experimenting and exploring. So cool. I hope more people give it an opportunity, the changing art styles you can move through in an instant, its just mesmerizing.
Some clarification on project blue peacock,
The chicken's weren't supposed to set off the bomb, the chickens were to act as insulation in the winter... See the idea was to plant nuclear bombs like landmines across the entire border region with the USSR so that if they every invaded they would be met with a wall of nuclear annihilation. But during the winter some of the electronics in the bomb could get damaged so they needed a way to keep the bombs warm... so they decided to build a specialized chicken coup into the bomb which would be buried... with the chickens inside.
The bombs were meant to be buried as an invasion was starting I guess because they specifically tested how long chickens would survive in such conditions.
:) that's all.
I'm so glad you covered jazz punk, it's such a hilarious under-represented game
could've used a warning for flashing lights during chunks of the jazzpunk section. it could be seriously dangerous for someone with photosensitive epilepsy, and even though i don't have any form of epilepsy, the flashing was strong enough to start hurting my eyes.
Honestly that's totally fair and I'm surprised the game got away with it. Stuff like that has been forbidden in traditional animation for 20 years.
tbh ALOT of curious archive's videos could use warnings (for flashing lights and also subject matter warnings too) at the start since theres a few vids where i ended up just watching through stuff that i know isnt good for me bc i didnt have any warning.
Damn that transition from Alice in wonderland to jazz punk was chilling
All the airport stuff is oddly fitting for me, since this episode was released right as I just passed the silliness of tsa security
Yo thank you for telling me the name of Jazzpunk, I remember watching a video of someone playing through it as a child and it was such a unique game that I never really forgot it
This feels a whole lot like a Jacob Gellar video. And it's fantastic
The chicken was not the timer, the bonbs were buried with chickens to keep the crappy electronics of the era from getting frozen, the chickens were essentially living heaters for the bombs. If you want crazy stuff checkout the bird homing missiles.
haven't watched yet but can tell its amazing
the viewfinder tech is actually quite basic, some engines even come with that capability as default feature, but the execution is nothing short of miraculous.
I'm surprised Portal 2's f-stop development phase wasn't mentioned. Viewfinder and Superliminal are heavily inspired by that scrapped mechanic!
Man so glad I found this video not sure if id found your channel by then but god do I love the Alternate physics of reality genre 🙏 I really hope people keep expanding on these games
Very cool
Who here remembers the time with curious archive posted every Friday.
goddamn, i just keep finding more hits on this channel
16:00 If you want another very peculiar take on airports, I suggest a look at either edition of the TTRPG Over the Edge from Atlas Games. I won't spoil it, but the Al Amarja International Airport is one of the most memorably strange places I've run into in 50 years of roleplaying.
I love games with dream logic. They're simultaneously total nonsense and perfectly sensible. Psychonauts and Superliminal are both games where I went "ah yes, but of course" and then proceeded to solve a puzzle without any issues because if you just think about it from the perspective of a dream, the solution becomes obvious
I especially love the psychonaughts franchise
Seeing photos on the screen and walking through it is pretty amazing feature of the game.
Would love to see Curious Archive’s take on Outer Wilds.
Great game . Need more games like that one made .
THIS
He talks about it in his video "The Beautiful Horror of Deep Space"
@@yodel96 (this comment was from before that video existed)
15:47 Curious Archive discovers the concept of a social construct
Manifold gardens is in my top 3 of long-lasting gaming experience along withJourney and Gris. Thanks for listing the other ones, can't wait to try them!
Reminds ya of those videos where you see illusions mixed with portal.
Awesome video! Echochrome is an old PSP game that was one of the first puzzle games in which optical illusions and MC Escher esque spaces are a core mechanic of the game world
Posted 45 seconds ago? I'm making good time today.
14:20 this reminds me that in minecraft you can make a redstone randomiser by using a chicken and a pressure plate.
Also, pigeon homing missiles for surface/air to ship missiles
Chicken 👍
Hey man, your videos are really cool and I love your voice! You should make a podcast fr
aww, I was hoping you'd talk about security theatre in the airport segment!
Echochrome is like these. An artist's mannequin walks along paths and your job is to move the camera around to hide gaps or make paths. If you turn the world upside down, he falls, and he can walk along a surface which was previously unreachable. It's on PSP and PS3, and one of the two sequels is on PSV.
Too bad it isn't on PC.
It's the MC Escher game, where your perspective controls the world's reality. A classic.
Thank you for including references to external media scenes you use.
While not AS abstract, another I love is "The Magic Circle." It's a very meta satire where the player is a beta-tester on a game that's been stuck in dev hell for over a decade, in the middle of a battle between its eternally bickering devs. Gameplay is a fun 1PP puzzle-adventure that actively encourages the player to exploit the game, focused on Frankensteining NPCs together to create a makeshift army.
Plus fantastic voice acting, esp James "Rusty Venture" Urbaniak as a former 'rock star' 90s dev turned broken neurotic mess.
What's neat about it, and relevant here, is that as it goes on, it actually gets more and more meta. It doesn't just break the fourth wall - it keeps finding new meta walls to smash. But I really don't want to even hint at what it does in the last third of the game.
Watching this video gave me an idea, What if there was a game with no floor? Like you are quite simply falling, the whole time, never reaching the bottom. I mean there'd obviously be more than this, Something to do while falling, But I haven't gotten that far yet.
I wonder if you played Antichamber, Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor, and any game by Daniel Mullins.
They work with rules in interesting ways
Viewfinder seems absolutly genious
19:37 There has also been several animated films that make you question this fact. Most of these came from Looney Tunes. For instance, in "Daffy Duck and Egghead" the hunter Egghead shoots an "audience member" who comes late to the theater and refuses to sit down. But probably the most famous example is "Duck Amuck", where Daffy Duck complains to the animator all through the film how he isn't treated with the respect a "star actor" like himself deserves. This is implying that Daffy actually acknowledges that he IS, in fact, just a hand-drawn character, and the film's director is his boss who he demands to see. This director (spoiler) turns out to be Bugs Bunny, who was animating Daffy's shenanigans on the drawing desk the whole time!🤯🖋🖌🖍
Have you looked at hyper light drifter yet? Idk if it would fit with your style of content but it might be worth checking out. I feel like a lot of people would enjoy a deep dive into the world, and emotional metaphor of the game - I know I would haha. As always love the content, keep it up man!
The witness gave me headaches every time I played. But it was the first mind-bending game I played.
This is absolutely bonkers and amazing and fascinating all at once. Great video! How about an in-depth video on cryptids around the world?
It keeps breaking my brain every time you do it... HOW!!!
Thank you for making these thoughtful connections between reality and the unusual spaces human minds create.
for a long time i tried to remember the name of Jazzpunk, lately i started to think that it was just a dream of mine when i was younger.. i was so surprised to finally find it, after almost 10 years of occasionaly remembering something like that existing but never remembering the name, thank you hahah
that pronunciation of Cheshire really reminded me that you are not british.
That was a beautiful transition from Viewfinder to Superliminal. Well done :)
0:19 you can hear this clip lmao.
Dude, such a great video with a strong message. Well done
Areas in Persona 5 take place in “Palaces,” places in an alternate plane of reality rules by the collective unconscious, and these Palaces are created by individuals that have a distorted perspective of reality based on their corrupted desires, such as an abusive volleyball teacher viewing his school as his castle and himself as the king, a plagiarist master artist who exploits his pupils viewing his atelier as an enormous, gaudy museum, or a mob boss that sees all of Shibuya as his personal bank and the people in it as ATMs.
bruh stop. persona is weak over rated dribble
These videos are getting better and better with every upload
There's one section of The Matrix: Path of Neo that fits this description. You also have to fight ant monsters in that area. So many wrong doors and flipping of perspective it was aggravating.
I used to have a bit of an obsession with optical illusions so at about 6:48 in the video my brain just start going “MC Escher? MC Escher? He’s gonna say MC Escher isnt he”. I had a notebook I got from an art museum with one of his patterns all over it and I used it as a diary for years.
W
I played so many of these games, but the memories are fractured like a fever dream.
Viewfinder is genuinely one of the most impressive games I've ever seen
Have you played Antichamber? Was one of the first games that I thought broke all the rules I was used to in gaming before. It is still amazing. Once I figured out how to do it and that ending is just fucking amazing.
This video reminded me of some games that you should definitely check out if you haven't played! Broken Reality, Hypnospace Outlaw, and Hylics all are great in their own unique ways!
Katana Zero as well, I don't want to ruin the story but holy crap it has a good story that had me questioning what was happening.
I completely forgot that Jazzpunk existed. Thanks for reminding me!
Manifold garden is an absolute masterpiece. Once you finish, you can replay the game in a whole new way, which is harder than the first time
i saw the falling guy silhouette in the thumbnail and i was excited to see how the Myst series was gonna fit in.
saddened to see Myst was not, in fact, even mentioned 😔
however, you did mention a couple of other games that i really liked watching play throughs of, so it was still a net positive viewing 😁
I like how the little star appears by jazzpunk 2014, when you misstate the launch date
Man I love jazz punk so much! I played it when it first came out, very underrated
13:49 that’s not true. actually it’s because the first cat that was sent out got hit by a car and died so the project was cancelled.
The cats were actually trained very well.