I only wish that the breakup at its core yielded something worth holding on to. The puzzles compel, while the narrative stalls, and there is something worthy in that mismatch. I would describe it with that most damning of adjectives: it is interesting, which is often a way of sidestepping the yawning mineshaft where the fun should be. The atmosphere is mellow I was never so much hungry to press on as simply happy to. The art direction, by Tim Doolen, favours flat, dusty shades, punched through by pink domes and golden spires, and the soundtrack is warmed by the acoustic crooning of various indie bands. Maquette is, for most of its runtime, a pleasant distraction. Only once was this central conceit the cause of frustration, as I glared through a haze of caffeine and clenched teeth at one particularly stubborn problem-one of those that look simple the next day, once the steam evaporates. ![]() They demand that you rewire your thinking around what can be retrieved, shrunk, or expanded, by looping back to the scaled-down replica in the middle of the main chamber. Credit must go to the developer, Graceful Decay, for conjuring a series of puzzles that specialise in what you might call long-circuiting your brain. Where Maquette does come alive is in the moments when the last thing on your mind is love, and instead you’re lugging a pink crystal through a corresponding force field, the better to poke a key through a hole in the wall, to be collected, in miniaturised form, and slotted into the lock of a mechanical door. What’s more, the most perplexing mystery-more than the majority of the puzzles-is why Bryce Dallas Howard and Seth Gabel, who voice the two leads, and who happen to be partners in real life, should fail to summon a genuine spark. The first declaration of love is more of a slow drip: “I don’t want you to say something you are not ready to say.” “But I do want to say it.” And anyone who sums up their time with another soul by saying, “Our first year together was epic,” as Michael does, is deserving of nothing but our ire. Their initial encounter feels forced and clumsy-a meet-brute, as it were-as the pair grind through a cloying script (the story was written by director Hanford Lemoore). But the problem with Michael and Kenzie is that I spent most of the time praying for the crumble. To be fair, a crumbling romance isn’t exactly an ill-fitting frame for this soggy clash mechanics and themes have a nasty habit of undermining each other, like an embittered couple at a dinner party. Whatever the case, the narrative soaks awkwardly into play, like coffee into a sketchbook. Or the way our carefully enamelled inner lives can seem like the whole world. Fair enough, but why all the puzzles? The game brims with perspective-based conundrums that have you altering the size of objects-a key, for example-dropping them into a model-village version of reality and ducking as they come clanging down outside, larger than before. Maybe it’s a metaphor for those fights where something small gets blown out of proportion. They meet in a coffee shop, she spills coffee, narrowly missing his sketchbook, they laugh they date, move in together, and go painting in the park they drink wine and drift apart, frictions deepen into fractures, they break up. ![]() The architectural model is a room that will never be realized, except for in the imaginations of both artist and spectator.Maquette tells the story of two lovers, Michael and Kenzie, but I’m not sure why. ![]() Its digital walls create an added dimension that connect these two spheres. ![]() The maquette display represents a transition between the virtual to physical space. The eerie atmosphere of the electronic sounds underlines the hypnotic feel of the images, while reflecting an elusive reality based on abstract impressions and influences that every day architectural surroundings inspire. Black lines scan the image to reveal new dimensionalities of the architecture while emphasizing the tension between the screen surface and the depth of the space depicted.Īlthough deeply connected to the rhythm and textures of the images, the soundtrack by Roger Tellier Craig has been created independently from the video its length even differs from it, thus creating unpredictable associations between sounds and images every time the piece is looping. Common Areas: Perspectives is an interplay between the illusion of depth of the 3D technique and the flatness of electronic patterns vibrating lights and electrons give life to rigid architectures while creating an ever evolving space, punctuated by automated transitions.
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