Mystery is an incredible motivator, and illo – birth of the cool knows this. From its curious storyline to the nitty-gritty of its mechanics, the game is teeming with it. “The only points in common with other [videogames],” reads the game’s website, “is that it has a beginning… and an ending!” Enticing, no?
Mystery is an incredible motivator, and illo – birth of the cool knows this. From its curious storyline to the nitty-gritty of its mechanics, the game is teeming with it. “The only points in common with other [videogames],” reads the game’s website, “is that it has a beginning… and an ending!” Enticing, no?
illo (that’s right, lowercase) tells the story of the eponymous illo, a creature who awakes in, as the creators put it, “the wrong place.” As the player, it’s your job to safely traverse this land, replete as it is with strange environments and problems to solve. Doing so requires the use of tilt, sound, and touch, along with the mysterious “bKg” button.
But “strange” doesn’t necessarily mean complex. illo‘s environments have a very minimalist appeal to them, as does nearly everything else in the game. The story is conveyed through music and imagery, and you won’t encounter any sort of writing throughout the journey. So, if you can’t read, there’s no reason you can’t still play this game. But then again, if you can’t read you have no idea what I’m writing currently. Pineapples.
The game’s origin story is appropriately whimsical. Luca Eliani, an artist and popular voice actor in Italy, spent his life surrounded by cartoons and art. This played a significant role in the person he became, and altered his worldview in some interesting ways. illo is Eliani’s attempt to share a little bit of that. If the concept art is anything to go by, it seems as though he’s well on his way to pulling it off.
Eliani and company chose iOS and Android (though it sounds like a PC version is also in the works) for the game because of the ubiquity of the platforms. And while work has already begun on the game, the developers are also reaching out via Kickstarter in the hopes of raising the funding they need to both finish the game and market it. There’s no telling if the game will still see the light of day if the funding isn’t met, but the fact that they’re already hard at work gives us hope. Regardless, it’s worth checking out some of the rewards if the game sounds interesting to you.
illo is set to launch in November of next year.
