“I couldn’t stroll away from the pen and ink factor,” says John Evelyn, creator of The Collage Atlas, a dreamlike storybook journey just lately launched on Steam. The whole recreation is hand drawn, from tiny flowers and bugs to very large buildings and the clouds that float over them. Exploring this world unwraps its dreamlike story, with environments folding out in response to your method.
“I had been drawing for a few years earlier than that […] and I’d all the time draw with ink immediately, with none form of prior pencil work or sketching,” he says. “I appreciated all of the incidental particulars and the accidents that come out alongside the way in which.” He compares it to improv music — “really, generally it goes horribly incorrect!” — however says that the sensation of getting right into a stride and being stunned by surprising outcomes was essential to the entire recreation.
It’s due to this that the artwork fashion underpins the remainder of the expertise. The place particular person items of recreation artwork can fall into the background, The Collage Atlas requests your consideration to element — and rewards it. On the very begin of the sport, a pinwheel seems from a grassy plain; have a look at it, and it begins spinning. It was one of many first issues that Evelyn created, for what was initially an app meant to accompany an image e-book.
The e-book, a follow-up to a self-published work referred to as Asleep As The Breeze, was supposed to discover themes of company and the sensation of disempowerment that may come from traumatic or chaotic life experiences. “You can begin to really feel like life is one thing that’s form of taking place to you moderately than one thing that you’ve significant management or authorship of,” says Evelyn.
Whereas experimenting with that theme, “every thing clicked into place,” when the pinwheel spun, he says. “It all of a sudden made sense that, really, this was the crux of what I used to be attempting to speak about. That, really, even when it doesn’t really feel prefer it, simply your presence inside the world is genuinely significant and truly does have an effect on it. Even your gaze and your statement can also be significant.”
“Even your gaze and your statement can also be significant.”
Evelyn constructed on the app concept for a brief artwork expertise, which he exhibited on the Leftfield Assortment at UK gaming conference EGX in 2016. On the time, he says, he had no intention of continuous to develop it right into a recreation that may finally make it to Apple Arcade after which Steam. As a substitute, he says, it was “one thing that I personally felt like I actually wanted to do.”
“I had gone via a fairly unhealthy run of years,” he says, “and I used to be discovering it tough to seek out media that spoke to me concerning the issues I used to be experiencing.” Different media appeared deeply particular to others’ conditions, whereas Evelyn wished one thing broader. “Issues that simply nudge at common themes I discover actually helpful.”
On the present, folks related together with his piece. Particularly, Evelyn was swayed by the eye of “business-type folks,” who would ask him how lengthy the complete recreation would find yourself being. “In my thoughts, I used to be like, ‘Oh, do you really suppose that folks would need that?’” He says he was swayed by them as a result of, in the event that they had been coming at it from a “pretty chilly monetary standpoint” and thought there could be an viewers for it, he would possibly be capable of consider it himself.
Picture: John William Evelyn
He knew that he wished the expertise to be one thing that would “slowly soak up you” — that means a few hours, moderately than 10 minutes. For the subsequent 4 years, he threw every thing at filling out that scope. Though he had expertise and data from a profession that included time making Flash video games, working in freelance illustration, and releasing music EPs, he additionally had rather a lot to be taught. “The day that I began The Collage Atlas as it’s now, not the little demo model, that was the very first day I opened up [game engine] Unity,” he says.
With a purpose to convert illustrations to 3D, a course of he had by no means completed earlier than, he started by creating the fashions in Unity earlier than printing their maps and drawing within the particulars with pen. As soon as scanned again in, these textures had been readded to the mannequin to create the world of The Collage Atlas and every thing that makes it up.
“Works don’t have any form of permanence — they will simply vanish.”
After practically 5 years of labor, in 2020, the sport was launched on Apple Arcade, however in 2023 it was delisted when the exclusivity interval ended. Not lengthy afterward, even individuals who had downloaded it weren’t capable of launch it. “That is the unhappy factor about the way in which our form of artistic mediums are going: works don’t have any form of permanence — they will simply vanish,” he says. Evelyn felt he owed it to his previous self who did all that work to ensure the sport was nonetheless out there and just lately launched it on Steam.
After the sport’s Apple Arcade launch, Evelyn thought he is likely to be completed engaged on video games. “I spoke to one in all my mates who’s a AAA developer and I mentioned, ‘That’s it. That’s me completed. I’m by no means doing this once more.’ He mentioned, ‘I’ll offer you six months.’” Nearly precisely six months later, he began engaged on his subsequent recreation, The Wings of Sycamore. Additionally hand-drawn, it’s one thing of a religious sequel to The Collage Atlas.
“Atlas is attempting to discover the thought of falling inwards,” he says. “Wings of Sycamore is about flight. After you handle to climb again out of the depths, hopefully, that’s while you simply have the pure pleasure of flying.”