The history of computer video games has gone through a massive evolution over the course of the past decade—an evolution that's so important it might be befuddling to those of us who never progressed beyond the golden age of mid-1990's point-and-click exploration games like Myst and Raven. Many of today’s computer games use elaborate ploys for immersion—from complex role playing worlds to hyper-realistic 3D visuals—but we’ve also seen the emergence of thousands of lightweight and simple web-based games that have given way to a culture of “casual gaming.” These are the gamers who won't commit to buying a new 3D graphics accelerator card every 18 months, who can't install a plugin properly and who never played Flight Simulator during high school. Instead, they turn their attention and spare time to those Java/Flash-type cheap online games, which are free and highly addictive, the type of games that are responsible for a persistent lack of productivity and dwindling attention-spans in workplaces the world over.This trend is the reason we're surprised and intrigued to witness the birth of a good old PC game—the kind of game you have to install on your computer and maybe even “set up.” Proun is a PC game that’s both simple and sophisticated. Simple because its plot and gameplay are intuitve and immediately fun—the player plays the part of a ball rolling along the edge of an infinite tube full of obstacles—and sophisticated because Proun owes its name and aesthetics to El Lissitzky, Russian artist and designer who was a pioneer of the Soviet avant-garde and suprematism movements. Lissitzky developed an abstract, and geometric suprematist series of paintings called "Proun" – a Russian acronym for 'Design for the confirmation of the New.’ The game's visuals therefore borrow from the visual lexicon of the 1920's cubo-futurism and avant-garde abstract art, likewise giving nods to the visual styles of Malevich, Mondrian, Kandinsky and the Bauhaus. We admit, it all sounds a little pretentious, but the results are gorgeous and the different levels actually look good and, since the design style is innately minimalist, it never comes across as too heavy-handed.On his blog, the creator of the game tells the story and inspiration behind this project. He explains that Proun for first a rejected proposal for a video game assignment in his Fine Arts School, and then proceeds to describe the visual world he tried to input to the final version of the game.[Via Rhizome]
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