The man responsible for the film-based game The City of Lost Children, is not driven by any love of videogaming. When Marc Caro, the designer behind the sweaty, steampunk look of the film, was asked to translate that same mood to Psygnosis' game, he just saw it as another way of constructing an interesting world.
What interests him most on any project is the creation of a universe. "The support upon which this universe can materialize is of little importance," Caro tells Wired News.
The game, released for the PlayStation on Wednesday, follows the exploits of Miette, a little girl, as she winds her way through harbors, lighthouses, and dens of criminals, trying to accomplish a series of underworld missions that overlap with, but are not based directly on, the film. Both film and game are set in a bizarre seaside world, which combines elements of noir, science fiction, and childhood nostalgia.
Videogames are in a nascent stage, Caro says, in which their narrative techniques are largely imitative of TV and cinema. They are quickly evolving, though, and Caro finds it interesting to work on film and video simultaneously.
Caro is currently at work on the design of Nemo, a film based on the Jules Verne classic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. When asked what his favorite videogame was, Caro avoided narrative games altogether and cited Metasynth, a program that generates sounds based on images fed into it, as being the most fun of any program he's used.
