#the game has taken place over a couple of decades and glenn is one of my only humans so i wanted to do an age progression pic

[spadefish]

A human hound who was personally raised and trained by the prince of Helena and his sheriff. Viciously loyal to his prince to the point of self-detriment. Harbours a particular resentment towards the Brujah.

[entergamingxp]

Superliminal Review — Shifting My Perspective on Puzzles

July 6, 2020 12:00 PM EST

Superliminal is an inventive joy of a puzzle title and makes for a perfect way to reenter the puzzle genre as a whole.

Let me preface this review with this – I am not good at puzzle games, and Superliminal is very much a puzzle game. In fact, I’ve mostly avoided the genre as it’s typically not my speed. Simply put, I’m not extremely interested in puzzle games. If you asked me to name one from the last decade I’d answer with Professor Layton, skipping over many other fantastic titles that have also come out.

That may be why I was so surprised when I finished Superliminal in just a couple of sessions, having enjoyed every minute of it. It’s not your average puzzle game though as it’s not very complex and it leans heavily on a narrative delivered through radios placed at each level. However, what makes Superliminal truly unique isn’t its gameplay or story, but rather the way it uses both to impart a clear-cut message onto its player.

In Superliminal, you play as someone who has signed up for an experimental form of dream therapy. The entire game plays out in the character’s subconscious, which led me to question the things that I would find lying around. Chess pieces, dollhouses, and soda machines clutter this strange, 90s office-themed dreamscape, but they all have their purpose. Most of these random objects feed into the game’s mind-bending main feature – changing the size of something depending on your perspective.

“What makes Superliminal truly unique isn’t its gameplay or story, but rather the way it uses both to impart a clear-cut message onto its player.”

It’s a difficult concept to explain, so here are the layman’s terms. If you pick something up, it’s always going to be placed against the surface furthest from where you’re looking at. However, the item remains the same size from where you saw it. If you pick up a can of soda that’s 2 feet away from you and place it at the end of a room, the result is the biggest can of soda you’ve ever seen. It takes a while to understand the rules of this mechanic; how things can be placed, how to change their size, and how objects react to one another.

One of the things I really appreciated about Superliminal was this laissez-faire approach. At no point does the game tell you what to do, how its mechanics work, or what approach may be the best. Instead, you’re thrown straight into the mind-bending halls of your character’s brain to sort it out. For most puzzle games, I would have found an issue with this. Toying around with a game’s mechanics is easy for me when it’s clear what they are, but going in without knowing anything is a different story.

One room, in particular, stumped me – the door leading out of it was a brick wall, but cracks in the room’s walls let me peek outside and see the exit. It took me about fifteen minutes to figure out the walls could be knocked down with a large enough object. The frustration I felt with the puzzle was immediately replaced with sheer joy and satisfaction when the solution finally clicked, which was a common sensation I experienced playing the game.

This hands-off approach is one of the many things about Superliminal’s gameplay that ties into its narrative. Over the course of the game, you’re directed by Dr. Glenn Pierce, who attempts to guide you as you move from one dream to another. However, it’s important to remember that your character is undergoing a special kind of therapy this whole time. In it, the good Doc fills the role of your usual psychiatrist, while the game’s mechanics are the tools being taken away from this extensive, trippy session. And like the therapy I’ve experienced, it’s up to you to use those tools when situations arise. The therapy motif of Superliminal extends even to its name, which is based on the word “liminal” which relates to the transitional point of a process, or change. Simply put, over the course of the game, your character is in the midst of a process of change.

This all ties back to the main fixation of Superliminal – perspective – which influences every part of the game. As if messing with how handled objects react wasn’t enough, the game is filled with tricks of the eye, ranging from your classic room that gets smaller the further you go into it to hallways that feed into themselves. Superliminal does something a lot of games are afraid to do – it abandons the rules of reality. Even in Mario game,s what goes up eventually comes down, but that’s not always true in Superliminal. Directions become subjective, distance becomes meaningless, and the laws of physics are often thrown out the window.

Taking away these limitations left the game with a distinctively unique art style, especially towards its end. I won’t detail the scenery too much as it’s a pleasure to go through if you’re unaware. I will say though that the ways that light and dark are used lead to some gorgeous and clever puzzles. I had to yell after walking through the shadow of a filing cabinet into the next room because it was just brilliant.

“Superliminal is more than worth your time.”

Of course, these artistic choices come with their fair share of downsides. Those with vertigo, or really any inner ear problems, will likely want to stay far away from Superliminal. I even experienced mild nausea on one occasion when I was tricked into thinking up was straight ahead. Likewise, the game hasn’t quite got its physics figured out. It turns out that throwing the laws of physics out the window comes with some drawbacks. I ended up falling through the floor, sending myself flying, or sending objects flying multiple times during my nearly three-hour-long playthrough.

What may have bothered me the most out of this shortlist of grievances was Superliminal’s playtime. I enjoyed my time with the game, and as it reached its end, with its dreamscape reality destabilizing more and more, I found myself hoping the end wasn’t coming. But as the game delivered its final and most blatant messages and the credits began to roll, I figured it was for the best. Although it’s unlikely that I revisit the game, I felt that in my time with it I had experienced everything I was meant to.

Superliminal is the first puzzle game that I’ve played in a long time and I came away from it genuinely wanting more. Everything about it, from its innovative puzzles to its surrealist art style, and even its unusual soundtrack, is exciting. Even when the game floundered, when puzzles weren’t clearly laid out or the game’s physics engine had a conniption, my annoyance was often quickly replaced with another more positive emotion. I can’t stress this enough, as a puzzle game fan or not, Superliminal is more than worth your time.

July 6, 2020 12:00 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/superliminal-review-shifting-my-perspective-on-puzzles/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=superliminal-review-shifting-my-perspective-on-puzzles

[brendagilliam2]

11 places to find logo design inspiration

You’ve just taken a new brief from a new client and now you’re sitting at your desk waiting for inspiration to strike. Do you really expect the perfect logo design to pop up, fully formed, in your mind? If you do, you could be in for a long wait.

Instead, it’s up to you to seek out logo design inspiration. If you let a wide variety of ideas collide inside your brain, gradually they should coalesce into the logo you’re looking for. The trick is knowing where to look for inspiration in the first place.

Below are some suggestions of places you could start – but remember this can never be an exhaustive list because inspiration can come from anything, anywhere…

01. Look beyond the obvious

Classic logos are a good place to start… but make sure you don’t stop there

Cast your net far and wide. Don’t just look at the top 10 best logos ever (although that’s not a bad place to start). You need to also look beyond that, at design in general and at the wider world. 

Whenever you see something that stands out or appeals to you, for whatever reason, file that thought. Let it inform your design process and contribute as your new logo starts to evolve.

02. Just doodle

Don’t overthink things – start with some free doodles (photo by Sticker Mule on Unsplash)

Sometimes you can overthink these things and end up getting nowhere, so why not cut your conscious mind out of the loop and instead let the creativity flow, unguided, with a bit of random doodling? 

You may well end up with a page of pointless scribbles, but somewhere in the disjointed mess of lines you might spot something that fires up that essential spark of inspiration.

03. Explore design websites

On sites like Behance you can filter search results to logo designs

There are a number of dedicated logo design sites, including Logo Gala and Logo Moose, as well as Creative Bloq’s dedicated logo news channel. But you should also widen your research to include other graphic design sites, and art and design sites in general, like Dribbble, Behance or DeviantArt.

Explore further down the results pages to visit sites you haven’t seen before and also narrow your search to put the spotlight on logos in the same industry or belonging to companies of similar size, aspirations and values.

04. Plunder your client’s history

Take a dive back into your client’s logo design history

Check out all the various logos your client has employed since the company was founded. This can be particularly interesting if they go back for many decades. 

You may be able to hark back to the past, if the client would like to position itself as a heritage brand, or you might be able to radically overhaul tits original logo into something fresh and modern. This has the advantage of built-in continuity even as you present a new image.

05. Explore your client’s future

Discuss with your client its plans for the future – what does it envisage for the next 12 months or the next five years? Are there changes of direction imminent or new products coming on stream that could have some bearing on the logo you design? You need to future-proof the logo because businesses do change over time.

Take, for example, Carphone Warehouse: no-one buys carphones any more – so should it lose a highly successful brand that has taken years to build by changing its name to something more appropriate?

06. Phone a friend

A fresh eye can provide you with valuable insights (photo by William Iven on Unsplash)

While it makes perfect sense to get as much information as you can from the client, sometimes there’s nothing quite so helpful as a fresh pair of eyes. 

If you have some ideas worked up, take them to a friend who has absolutely no connection to the project, and see what they think. Often someone’s untainted opinion can be just what you need to fire the imagination.

07. Build some mood boards

The Matboard is a great mood board tool

Mood boards and brainstorms can help you to straighten out your thoughts and mix up different images and ideas of all shapes, sizes and themes. 

Play with keywords and synonyms and gather a multitude of inspirations from different sources onto a single mood board to see how they combine.

08. Trawl through your own design archives

It’s probably a fair guess that for every logo you design you probably come up with a couple of dozen sketches before you decide which one to develop further. Never throw away these early ideas, as they form a valuable resource. Just because one of your early sketches didn’t work for a previous client, it doesn’t mean it won’t work at all. 

Go back through previous work that you’ve done but not used and you may find the seed that, with a bit of nurturing, could grow to become the logo you’re looking for.

09. Blast your brain with random images

Check out the Creative Bloq Pinterest boards for a blast of inspiration

Scroll through Google Images and Pinterest on both related and unrelated subjects to your client’s logo needs. Then add the results to your mood board. 

Pick a colour here, a shape there, a word, a typeface… then see how these different ideas could work together.

10. Stay receptive

At the end of the day, inspiration can strike anywhere, at any time. Be receptive to the ideas that flow through your mind. Sketch something as it comes to you and then revisit it later to see how it might work within the parameters of your brief. 

At these early stages of the design process you need to allow your creativity full rein. Give yourself plenty of ideas to work with and then take the best elements from each and discard the rest.

11. Do something else

Give your mind a break from the task at hand (photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash)

If you’ve tried everything and nothing’s coming up, don’t try to force it. Take a break and let your brain get on with other things. Go to see a film, play some video games, cook a nice meal or just have a lovely nap. It’s amazing how just getting away from the problem at hand and thinking about something else can result in a sudden flash of exactly the right kind of inspiration.

There’s no point just waiting for inspiration to hit. The more you search it out, the easier you’ll find it. You’ll develop an eye for what works and what doesn’t, and how you can apply this to your own nascent designs.

Read more:

10 commandments of logo design

15 fantastic logo fonts

5 things to research before designing a logo

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from Brenda Gilliam http://brendagilliam.com/11-places-to-find-logo-design-inspiration/