How the art of MINIATURES amplifies its story
Plus, how the Switch 2's price makes sense
The Switch 2 details just came out this morning so I’m using today’s newsletter as a brief window for me to not think about the console and how it’s out on June 5 and is also the cost of a PS5.
After praising the efficiency of Clickolding as a thirty-minute game a couple weeks ago, I have been blessed with the wonderful Miniatures. This, my friends, is manifesting. I would love it if I could manifest better car insurance premiums, or a pre-order invite from Nintendo for the Switch 2 even though it’s the cost of a PS5, but in the meantime this will have to do. Miniatures is a beautifully brief narrative adventure game about children and their relationships with their imaginations. And I’m sure this will surprise you, but a game about youthful imagination ends up being pretty sad. But it’s good! Every piece of the game is wonderful, but the art really sends it home.
Yes, this is a Sad Children game, but it is, again, good. Not as good as the Switch 2 being 65 days away from release, but it is packed with meaning and interesting uses of art. Split into four unrelated stories, each has its own unique visual style that is actively used to represent the tone, making this a narrative game that feels vital to a constantly changing landscape. Most games have an overall art direction, but choosing different directions for each story here gives you the feeling that each tale is its own beast.
The first story features a child in wide, large rooms lit only by huge windows, with all internal light fixtures being represented by child-like drawings that don’t match the overall environment. Another represents the simple, silly lives of little creatures who live in a sandcastle with a style that feels as if James and the Giant Peach were crossed with Spongebob, focusing only on one fixed location. The third story is told in a scrolling format akin to an actual storybook, and the final one features only the body parts of a family with line boiling (when lines move even though the characters don't).
Every one of these styles acutely communicates a thematic element of a story, resulting in the feeling that you’re processing the narrative with different parts of your body. It scratches your brain in the same way that Into the Spider-Verse does, keeping you from just resting and letting the visuals fall into the background. The game will completely arrest you as you go through it, resulting in a devastatingly meaningful thirty minutes.
It’s almost as devastating as seeing the Switch 2’s price tag.
Be Nice
The Switch 2’s Price - $450 for the console and $80 for the new Mario Kart, and this is coupled with the fact that Nintendo basically doesn’t do sales. It’s difficult to have such a big price bump for a company that has historically been the budget, family-friendly option. The new console price is a 50% increase from the Switch 1. That’s huge. But the facts are:
Inflation
Tariffs (I would be shocked if this didn’t factor into the price as it’s more expensive in the US than other regions even after conversion)
The new Switch has a lot of beefier hardware
Games cost a lot of money to make
Prices haven’t increased in thirty years
While it’s a tough pill to swallow, the new price makes complete sense. Games cost a lot and should be valued as such. We pay $20+ to see movies in a theater (in big cities, at least), and games provide entertainment often for thirty times a movie’s runtime. We don’t need to be able to afford every game that comes out in a year. We just need to enjoy the ones we can afford.
Oh, Good
That new DK game looks SICK.