Less is difficult.

The sparse aesthetics that I’m using in the exterior area of Bientôt l’été are making it difficult to add things. Everything is very empty and simple. So if I want to add something special, it clashes. In other games I could add some particles here, some dirty blotches there and some special effects that are maybe a little corny. But against the spartan backdrop of a blank sky and an empty beach, there’s not much room. Things quickly look silly or out of place.

Everything needs to be very subtle. This contradicts the need to emphasize a special item in the world, or visualize the result of an action. Those things need to stand out but then they clash aesthetically.

Sometimes I wish I could just wipe my arm over my game table and just remove everything. Minimalism is nerve-racking.

And I have known this since my youth, when I wrote

If one fights excess with soberness, every simple act seems improbably grotesque. Fighting the surplus with the nothing expresses itself with the little, which is always hopelessly too much compared to the nothing. There is no defense against the baroque. Even destruction heightens the baroque effect.

There is no defense against the baroque.
I know. This will probably be the only modernist videogame I ever do. But I have to try. If only once. And if only as a recognition of and tribute to the little modernist art that I do appreciate (Duras’ novels, but also Nouvelle Vague cinema).