\n<\/p>\n
H<\/span>ere is poetry in the form of a game description. Bernband is \u201ca sci-fi exploration game for people who like to wander\u2026\u201d. Players will be able to simply walk around a colourful and unusual world, wandering in the glow cast by streetlights and ducking beneath zigzagging overhead flags. They\u2019ll tour hallways where strange green life grows politely in planters, and they\u2019ll even get the chance to snooze on rattling otherworldly subway trains while hand grips \u2013 tentacle grips? \u2013 jiggle as they hang overhead. \u201cThere\u2019s no goal but to stroll,\u201d the game\u2019s Steam page promises. \u201cWhere will your feet take you?\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s something intoxicating about a game that just lets you wander. But it doesn\u2019t mean the game itself is easy to make, of course. \u201cWandering [as] the main goal is quite difficult for many reasons,\u201d says Tom van den Boogaart, the developer of Bernband, who is using the project to reimagine a much smaller version he made in 2014. \u201cTo let players explore on their own, I think you first of all need to give them some context, such as where they are and what kind of world they are exploring.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018Exploration is the main goal\u2019 \u2026 Bernband.<\/span> Photograph: Sokpop Collective<\/p>\n As a result, every wander through Bernband begins in the same way: in a small apartment with a window that offers a glimpse of the strange universe the game inhabits. \u201cThe idea is to communicate that you are someone who\u2019s living in this city,\u201d Van den Boogaart says. \u201cAnd that over time it will start to feel familiar. It\u2019s clear that your journey starts when you walk out of there through the door.\u201d The apartment also serves as a place that players can return to after exploring the city. \u201cIt creates the minor goal of, \u2018can I find my way back to my apartment?\u2019. Perhaps even if it\u2019s just something subconscious.\u201d<\/p>\n Van den Boogart quickly learned that a wandering game also needs to give players a number of places to head for at any time. As a result, most of the world of Bernband is set up in a nonlinear manner. \u201cMost of the time there are multiple ways to reach a location,\u201d he says, \u201cof which some are a bit more hidden or obscure than others. When exploration is the main goal of the game, you want to give players the choice of what to explore. Even if it\u2019s as simple as going left or right at a crossing.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>An alien city inspired by real-life places \u2026 Bernband. <\/span> Photograph: Sokpop Collective<\/p>\n With a design this unobtrusive, Van den Boogaart admits it\u2019s been a constant battle not to gamify things a little, whether that\u2019s adding a map that shows players places they\u2019ve already been to or a checklist for them to complete as they walk. He has resisted, however. \u201cI believe that having access to information like this takes away the magical feeling of stumbling upon a secret area,\u201d he laughs. \u201cYou would already in some way know that it exists.\u201d<\/p>\n Bernband\u2019s alien city is not a traditional open world, but instead consists of discrete areas that are linked by elevators and other transportation methods. The approach was chosen to allow players to focus completely on specific parts of a bigger place, all of which turn out to have their own personalities and flavours. In turn, Van den Boogaart works from a list of locations that he thinks would be fun or interesting. To keep himself creative, he ensures this list is fairly vague: big supermarket, shady bar, swimming pool with water slide.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And while it\u2019s an alien world, Bernband is inspired by places that Van den Boogaart knows in real life, whether that\u2019s his home town of Gouda in the Netherlands or the places the games industry tends to orbit,such as Tokyo, San Francisco and Stockholm.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen making a game, I prefer to draw inspiration from personal memories and experiences instead of other media such as games or film,\u201d he says. \u201cIt helps me to build a deeper and more personal connection with my work, and I hope that in the end this also gives the game and the world a unique feel.\u201d<\/p>\n Bernband is in development for PC, release date not yet confirmed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here is poetry in the form of a game description. Bernband is \u201ca sci-fi exploration game for people who like to wander\u2026\u201d. Players will be able to simply walk around a colourful and unusual world, wandering in the glow cast by streetlights and ducking beneath zigzagging overhead flags. They\u2019ll tour hallways where strange green life<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[2831,8127,1136,1326,4415,378,8128,2415,2305,798,8129],"class_list":{"0":"post-14498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-alien","9":"tag-bernbands","10":"tag-digital","11":"tag-dont","12":"tag-expect","13":"tag-games","14":"tag-landscape","15":"tag-map","16":"tag-perfect","17":"tag-place","18":"tag-wandering"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}