In this one-player run and jump game you are an art collector who has to add value to his collection by grabbing the paintings. But make sure you don't knock over the sculptures!
- The player has 90 seconds to 'collect' as many of the paintings as you can
- A painting can be 'collected' by the player colliding with it. The painting's value is then added to the score
- If you collide with any of the sculptures, the value is removed from your score
- The objective is to reach a score of $25,000,000
- Unsuccessful players can begin again by clicking 'Restart Game'
From the outset, I wanted this project to bring my background in the visual arts into contact with the new tools that I was learning. Hence, this simple game referencing the art market and collecting culture.
I decided that the game should appear as if it was being played inside a hand-drawn cartoon. Rather than pumping out the kaleidoscopic, rainbow colours synonymous with classic arcade games, I wanted it to have a more 'grown-up' feel. But the humor still needed to be a key element. The natural source material was the recognisable language of the New Yorker magazine cartoons.
In the character, I drew particularly from the work of Saul Steinberg who first contributed to the magazine in 1941. He is the die-cut capitalist from Steinberg's drawings, a 'Daddy Warbucks' -type character, which was perfect for my Art Collector.
These were supplemented by excerpts from Ad Reinhardt's 'How to Look at Art' series of cartoons.
In continuation of these references, I respectfully borrowed from the design of the New Yorker web page when divising the colouration and styling of the app. The iconic masthead should be recognisable to most.
The sound effects all came from the BBC sound archive. I grew up listening to a lot of BBC radio and this archive contains sounds from accross its broad spectrum. In this case I used some of the more 'slap-stick' sounds that came from classic comedy programmes like the Goon Show.
