«The prototype was shown at the AdventureX in London last year», explains Joe Richardson in his game press kit. «And has also been featured in a number of horrific dreams I’ve had recently in which my life is falling to pieces to my about». It is an introduction very representative of what Four Last Things tries to make based on the work of the author that already dominated the same strategy for forty years: the use of pictorial art, somewhat solemn and refined to make comedy absurd and autoproclamadamente idiot. The author in question is called Terry Gilliam and his work were the interludes of the Monty Python’s travelling circus.
The game of Richardson became the week Steam without making much noise. It is a version worked and wide project presented at the Adventure Jam Gamejolt organized last year and where some took another laurel in the form of jury selection, and the influence of Gilliam is something that the same author is responsible for always emphasize: it has extrapolated the videogame those hilarious micrometrajes where Victorian illustrations were completely unexpected and giant human feet stomping or is shooting farts sound followed by giggles pudorosas.
Your source of visual content, on the other hand, is extremely lavish Renaissance painting, so Richardson has leftover material to represent any situation that comes to mind in a genre to which you feel very well the adaptation of more or less classical styles of pictorial representation. It is an adventure game point n’ click very classic to which the author defined as a crossroads nutcase of Monkey Island, the work of El Bosco and the humor of Monty Python.
In fact the game already part of a narrative premise quite pythoniana: you are an old pilgrim of the 16th century who devoted the last days of his life which already ends to walk the path towards a distant Church which confess their sins and be spiritually clean face his encounter with God. The problem is that the type is so concentrated in the own task of his pilgrimage that inadvertently moves long your destination and ends up in the wrong Church, where they do not let him enter or confession by sins committed in another jurisdiction. So that, no time to turn back, just a way to be accepted in the Church before his death: committing few new sins in the surrounding area.
The Four Last Things prototype is free and lasts about half an hour, and full version round two hours in which the jokes and more self-confident ridiculous comedy moves us with a 2D animation that simulates the Basic, cheap and rudimentary stop motion with articulated puppets of paper used Gilliam in the 1970s. And as it happened in the humor of Monty Python, also goes well served for self-consciousness: the pictures used by Richardson to set up scenarios are increasingly crazy and strange (and real!), so the protagonist does not lose the opportunity to comment quite funny about them going.
Both the interactions of the character with pictures and very precise descriptions that accompany them emit a humor that reminds the famous blog of the Hematocritico of art, that added dialogues and funny titles to paintings of all times.
In Christian theology, the Four Last Things, the four last things or quattuor novissima, refer to death, judgment, heaven and hell, the last four stages of the soul in the beyond. Almost sounds to the four levels of a video game, so this type of religious imagery associated with the adventure game looks quite natural, especially if it is with a sense of humor so necessary in our midst. And if this is pure blasphemy, I know what: attending by Dios.
Four Last Things is available on Steam for 7,19 euros and you can download their free prototype on Gamejolt.
