Compiling some 8,000 pieces of hand-drawn artwork, artist Alle Jong's upcoming Sketchy Fables is a bold-looking experimental game that clearly wants to not only defy visual conventions, but the structure of a game. Described by Jong as a "comic-book that has broken up over a landscape," Sketchy Fables seems to draw from visual novels, art games, comic books, and cartoons to portray a world for you to explore and find the story of.
The game world has touches of surrealism, but at the same time reaches for a kind of thick-lined impressionism. Everyday objects like trees are infused with movement, and visual boundaries are drawn with harsh lines and the kind of clipping that'd be considered a flaw in more mainstream games, but are used as tool here.
"There is an Main storyline, but nothing is what it seems," says the Steam store page. Videos on Jong's YouTube show in-progress versions of the game going back over a year. Sketchy Fables doesn't yet have a release date.
A gameplay trailer, released just this week, shows off the world from foot and from inside a train. From the description: "In this gameplay video the player jumps on an train and travels from Cybercity to Bird city."
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the surreal debut RPG from Sandfall Interactive, is out this April and I can't wait to hang out with my inscrutable balloon comrade
- The team behind one of 2024's hidden gems is following it up with a stop-motion 'relaxed digging and discovery' game about a happy robot's underground adventures beneath a lake of slime
You can find Sketchy Fables on Steam, where it doesn't yet have a release date. You can follow development on official site sketchyfables.com.
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