The Graveyard
The Graveyard is a black-and-white-hued experimental videogame where a lone elderly woman slowly moves into the distance through a cemetery, then returns. Belabored by the wiles of age, the character’s pace is drawn out to almost heroic-tragic proportions. At the final grave, you can have the elderly woman sit and listen to a sad Flemish song for as long as you’d care to listen. Then you navigate her to slow limp toward the screen again, through the shadows of the tombs. Then the game ends. Elegantly simple, and subtly poetic, The Graveyard, like many of Tale of Tales’ games, is notable for trying to combine formally minimalist sets of possible actions (walk forward, sit, listen, walk back) with nuanced dramatic undertones that highlight our problematic and nebulous relationship to exploring virtual space as virtual characters. One very… interesting… note that lends additional complexity to the project is that the game is freeware, but if you pay $5 for an official copy, it is identical but there is the possibility that your character dies while sitting on the bench.
Creator: Tale of Tales (Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn)
Link: http://tale-of-tales.com/TheGraveyard/
Connections:
Alice Neel - Last Sickness
Duane Hanson - Flea Market Vendor