The Collage Atlas (PC)
The Collage Atlas is a 3D first-person narrative exploration game realized almost entirely through the detailed ink pen drawings of its creator John William Evelyn. Every piece of the environment is an illustration even when it is a 3D object, and when looking at static screenshots, it is hard not to be wowed by the effort implied in bringing such an artistic concept to life. Once you step into its picture book world though, unfortunately the impressive claim starts to feel a bit more believable as you see the limits and shortcuts taken to bring this idea to life.
The Collage Atlas is primarily a story of falling and getting back up again as represented through a figure dropping out of their hot air balloon in the sky and trying to remove the enormous anchors holding down a new means of air travel. Setting out into the world you at first really only see an expansive white void, but soon the pen-drawn objects will pop up. Grass, bushes, and trees will help to tell you the shape of the landscape and guide you on where to go, and soon you’ll start seeing the intricately detailed pen art applied to more complicated objects. Ornate structures, metal fences, greenhouses, lighthouses, and ruins all undoubtedly took a skilled hand to draw with only black and white for coloration, the game usually only utilizing other colors for the glowing yellow butterflies that comprise some interactions and red butterflies that guide you to optional activities. Undoubtedly you will feel the temptation to stand back and bask in the clear dedication required to bring some of the sights before you to life, and The Collage Atlas is no stranger to setting up specific sights like an underwater world or other abstract spaces specifically to be breath-taking.
As you look about though, you start to see this hand drawn style doesn’t so much rely on drawing each of the unique settings you come across in your journey but instead individual objects the game will repeat over and over and sometimes flagrantly. For example, a grandfather clock will have have an undeniable degree of attention given to its details despite the limited color palette, but then you see grandfather clocks littered all over the place and sometimes in piles and they all have the exact same wood grain texture. You start noticing the same two-dimensional bush that turns to face you as you walk around it so it didn’t need more work to be a 3D object, and while some areas can introduce visual variety with a more pronounced theme, these abstract spaces quite clearly lean on the same tools for their construction. It becomes a far less impressive world when you have to look beyond the same familiar lanterns, rocky arches, and wooden tresses to even try and find something nearby that is a new sight to behold, and while at least the area piling grandfather clocks on each other has a metaphor behind it, elsewhere seeing them and other objects again and again dulls the interest that not even floating trees and islands can make up for after.
Since The Collage Atlas is mostly a narrative exploration game, a good deal of interacting with the world is just going to involve walking around and finding the right things to look at or approach. There are more interactive moments such as needing to cross moving platforms at the right time, sliding automatically and trying to catch an object ahead of you, dodging falling objects, and even something close to a brief bit of golf in terms of the mechanics used to hit a jar of butterflies around, but these moments don’t require much thought and messing up usually just makes these often slow tasks take longer. There isn’t too much friction involved in these gameplay moments though so they’re not going to discourage people looking for a mostly relaxing stroll through ink environments, and there are some extras to find off the beaten path that also involve small interactions. These again are usually very basic and are just a small step above walking and looking at things such as walking to the right spots to clear out piles of letters or make pinwheels sprout out of the ground, but simplicity and accessibility combining here also means the activities in The Collage Atlas aren’t going to make up for the slowly fading novelty of the art direction.
Curiously though, a good deal of exceptional ink drawings are relegated to being rewards for poking around and doing the minor optional tasks. During The Collage Atlas you are gradually finding pages for a book and these will eventually contain the entirety of the game’s main adventure in them (save for one chapter needing to be replayed since you can choose your path for it) but the optional pages can have illustrations that feel more like standalone art pieces that can still connect to the game’s underlying themes. It definitely makes trying to find the extras more worthwhile even though that also pads out a game that won’t even take two hours to clear, and hunting for them can often just involve walking around all available space hoping to notice some little incongruity that can hint at a quick task. More meaningful and varied visuals can be found in these art pieces than the environments you traverse, John William Evelyn undoubtedly talented and even having a knack for how to simplify the human form but add compelling detail to the world around his faceless figures.
On the other hand, The Collage Atlas’s writing feels uninspired and trite more often than not. As you explore, words floating in the air will appear or need you to bump the letters to form a brief statement. Often four to six words long or a sentence slowly stretched across multiple minutes of exploring an area, the statements that appear aim to lay out some of the game’s messages about persistence, hope, faith despite failure, and contending with our limited time in life, but it doesn’t do so with much grace or even much direction. Borderline platitudes will pop-up, the repeated positive messages too simple to build up to a more cohesive grand message and often lacking a kick because they’re presented in situations that don’t suit them much or already include many other floating phrases that feel lean on substance. It is quite possible one will be worded in such a way it can pierce your heart, but the game is rolling out so many of them it feels like it’s presenting these inspirational quotes without much care. It can feel more like rifling through a stack of motivational posters than being told a clear heartfelt message and the visual metaphors don’t feel like they’re picking up the slack in terms of depth. It less like you’re being given the tools to interpret the meaning of this artsy adventure and more like an effort at adding texture after the more demanding illustrative work took years to complete, the somewhat plain poetry giving it some fractions of a general direction but not the layers needed for an emotional or resonant game experience.
THE VERDICT: Even with the easily noticed time-saving choice to repeat many ink drawn objects in The Collage Atlas, the look of the abstract spaces you explore is undoubtedly its one trick to make it interesting and one that does hit a few times rather well. However, your actual exploration can grow fairly repetitive and filled with plain interactions, especially if you want to find the optional illustrations that are truly the game’s best works of art, and the environment losing its luster only really leaves you with the floating messages that feel too broad to have their intended impact. Its singular hook does not sustain even this very short game, The Collage Atlas the exact kind of game you’ll quickly forget after since not enough authentic substance backed up its impressive visuals.
And so, I give The Collage Atlas for PC…
A TERRIBLE rating. The Collage Atlas is terrible because it kills the very reason you come to the game through its ineffective structure. It would be one thing if its pen and ink environment hosted a more involved game where seeing repeated objects would help smooth out frequent interactions with them, but The Collage Atlas’s little moments of activity are rarely all that interesting and often overstay their welcome even if completed without issue. Walking through an area and seeing a reworded platitude over the same objects you see again and again leaves you aching for something less vague and abstract, the connecting threads not making a compelling enough statement to justify it all. You can get the gist of what it’s trying to say far too early so each new short phrase feels like a retread, and while the game will sometimes reward you for sticking with it in the form of an impressive scene or those hidden illustrations, it’s not adding enough to this short art game to tidy up its compromises and umambitious mechanics. It feels like a lot of heart and work was put into drawing specific things but they aren’t packaged well here, and the real clincher that pushed this from being a dull let-down to something worthy of this low rating is its lack of staying power. There isn’t enough thought in its meaning to leave you pondering its words, and even the greatest sights are lacking in compelling context that would cement them in your head. It’s a game that will fade from the mind; people will remember it generally being pretty and not anything else, so while it can be cleared in a short session without much friction, it doesn’t feel like you should spend even that short bit of time with it.
I do admittedly swoon for hand drawn indie art styles fairly often and the fact it happens frequently shows that we are not starved for it. It doesn’t take too long these days to look up even pen drawn video games with the monochrome look, even 3D ones. They undoubtedly have different artistic messages and intentions behind their design, but the problem with The Collage Atlas is it ends up so muddled because what it says feels like it doesn’t come from the heart and the clear illustrative talent of the game’s creator doesn’t feel like it’s being applied to maximize its efficacy. You can buy a digital art book of the more focused art on Steam but only as DLC to this game, but it feels like the interactive elements do the drawings a disservice since they’re poorly applied to the game world. It is not the painstakingly realized pen drawings that let The Collage Atlas down, it’s the ideas surrounding them that make the art hard to appreciate.