Judero is a psychedelic trip through Scottish folklore
Juderoreleased for PC on September 16, it swings for the fences with a DIY spirit that sets the game apart from both its AAA and indie contemporaries. As the first game developed by Talha and Jack Co – Talha Kaya (Soul searching, Pill baby) and Jack King Spooner (Steadfast wine, Dujana) – it’s the perfect example of the duo’s arthouse sensibility and the trail of compelling projects that led them to collaborate.
Everything inside Judero is handcrafted, and I mean everything: the eponymous hero, the various critters he fights, and even the pause screen logo had real-world analogs before being implemented as digital assets in the Kickstarter and UK Games Fund-funded campaign adventure game. Many are cast from clay, with King-Spooner’s latent fingerprints visible on their grainy surfaces in stop-motion cutscenes, while others feature the distinctive ball joints of action figures, taken apart and reassembled like puppets to suit the needs of to satisfy the sentimental story.
“I often feel a bit removed from the art of video games because it’s not immediately clear how they’re made,” King-Spooner said in a behind the scenes video he was recently released Judero‘s launch. “I feel like humanity is being kept at a distance. Not everyone knows what a normal map is, or UV mapping, but most people have pressed some clay. You know, sometimes I know what I’m making, sometimes I know roughly, sometimes I just mess around and see what comes out.
Judero places you in the worn boots and kilt of a Celtic druid to whom you are introduced in media res as he wanders the countryside, looking for wrongs to right. He is a good-natured species, with a thick, Scottish burr – don’t expect him to repeat this.purple burglar alarm‘without any effort – and a wild beard that belies his gentle nature. Our hero carries a gigantic staff and at the end of the game can call on a range of skills, both martial and magical, to take down enemies and solve puzzles. But its true power (and actually the power of the game as a whole) lies in conversations, not combat or exploration.
Over the course of my six hours with JuderoI was blown away by how much dialogue there was. Every person Judero meets, whether it’s a random villager or a pink monkey hallucination, is willing to pontificate at length about the goings-on in their lives, as well as heavier topics like the afterlife, existentialism, religion, politics activism, and so on. so much more – little of which has to do with the quest at hand. They talk and Judero listens. Some of their thoughts and concerns seem disconnected from the game’s fairytale trappings, as if the developers are speaking directly to you, the player. The texture found in the game’s long-winded monologues is just as important to the experience as that of Judero’s superhero body and modeling clay features.
Judero‘s organic and imprecise approach to storytelling is in many ways reminiscent of King-Spooner’s self-proclaimed appreciation for the randomness of tactile materials over the precision of digital tools.
“I find it easier to make things this way,” King-Spooner told Talha Kaya, his future collaborator at Juderoduring a interview in 2015. “Pixel stuff for me is not very expressive, there is no room to experiment or allow mistakes to happen. It’s really derivative and there’s something sad about the accuracy and perfectionism that goes into it. If you soak a piece of paper and drip ink on it, the ink bleeds into the paper in the most incredible way. If you have a glass of water and pour a little milk into it, it is just wonderful to look at. If you play the same note on a piano for two minutes with the sustain pedal pressed and then add harmony to it, the resonance is sublime.”
While I’m not quite ready to write off digital art completely, I find a lot of truth in King-Spooner’s ethos. The muddy, uneven skin tone of his Judero models feel more realistic than all the hyper-realistic Soulslikes or military shooters tearing up the Steam charts. When a giant monster crawls across painted landscapes and through cotton bushes in a live-action movie, the environment squeezes and bends realistically because, well, the developers set up a camera and captured it as it actually happened. The feeling of being able to reach out and touch the figures on the screen is unique to a video game, and somehow just knowing that they are on a workbench in an art studio somewhere in Scotland can give you a are well on the way to creating Judero more than the sum of its parts.
Like my time with Judero came to an end, I felt more like a kid watching a puppet show in the library than an aging writer sitting at his laptop with a DualSense controller. Much like a child ignoring the nylon strings that hold up a puppet or the arm that disappears into the back of a puppet, I was more than willing to overlook some inconsistent gameplay to fully immerse myself in the game’s psychedelic adventure. give. Judero is special in a way that video games often no longer aspire to be, fusing the artistic sensibilities of its developers with the unique interactivity of the medium to create an experience that feels as untamed as the Scottish fairy tales from which it draws inspiration.
Judero was released on September 16 for Windows PC. It was reviewed on PC using a copy of the game purchased by the author. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased through affiliate links. Additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy can be found here.