There has been a great many developers that I had emailed back in December and at the time, only a small handful had responded to me asking them about their influence. Part of me wondered if my messages had even reached the others or perhaps the emails had somehow wandered into their spam folders. One such game I was attempting to contact its developers on was Incredipede. Waiting, I figured that perhaps I caught them while on vacation or even while they were busy. By some strange twist of fate, later that same week John 'Total Biscuit Bane posted his first impression play through of it with his video WTF Is... Incredipede. Finding the situation amusing, I decided to take a step back and just ponder things over until recently when I decided to re-email those whom I attempted to before.
Incredipede is a puzzle platformer created by Colin and Sarah Northway with art by Thomas Shahan, where you control a strange creature called Quozzle which appears to be an eye but which is able to grow 'arms' that help her navigate the world. When I first stumbled across the website, what caught my eye was the art style that was being presented. Even in the trailer, I was captivated by the bold, flat colors and thick outlines which were reminiscent of a wine label or even Japanese woodblock printing (moku hanga). With an obvious call for the player to use their imagination to move Quozzle through the various worlds, but the game also notes that there is a level editor allowing the player to create their own puzzles and share them with others. I wasn't too sure how my second attempt of emailing the creators would go but within minutes of me sending my question out, creator Colin Northway responded:
Hey, Dawn, I'm not sure how I missed your email in December, sorry about that.
My original vision for the art was to be based on botany books from the age of discovery. Thomas' art (the artist for Incredipede) skewed earlier but maintained the same spirit.
I've cc'd Thomas as well to see if he has any comments.
I was pleasantly surprised that Colin apologized for missing my email to him but explained to him that I figured that I had caught him originally when he was busy. When I read that his inspiration was actually from botany books, I could see what he meant. The style the game leans closer to is the illustrations from the mid 1750s to the late 1800s by such people as Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708 – 1770) instead of illustrations from the 1900s to present.
If you're interested in checking out the game yourself, you can find it here:
gog.com – Incredipede $14.99
Incredipede has been greenlighted on Steam on January 10th, 2013 so should be available relatively soon.
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