Mario Von Rickenbach is a Swiss designer and creative technologist. He works within the intersection of design, art, and technology through his works produced through game design, programming, and animation; his games explore a wide variety of styles and are often very minimalist in their design. Rickenbach attended Zurich University of the Arts for architecture– where he realized game design was a subject more suited for him.
What interested him most about architecture was the process of designing and constructing these buildings and landscapes, a process he soon discovered that, as an architect, he would not be able to be apart of. Gaming and game design became the missing link for his passion– a passion and interest that comes out in his most notable game Drei.
Drei
Drei can be a single- or multiplayer-game with the goal of stacking the given blocks in such a way that they are able to touch the hovering light in mid-air. The game is not only heavily influenced by Rickenbach’s attachment to the subject of architecture, its appearance and interface also embody his priorities and values as a designer. “Style is completely unimportant,” he says in an interview with KillScreen. “Style is a result– and not a goal– of design choices.” What makes Rickenbach so unique in the gaming industry is his rejection of stylized games whose style has no link or function to the game play itself. He also goes on in the interview to speak on touch screens and how it is a more direct physical interaction with the game itself, but often lacks the physical response a game could give such as a jolt in the game controller or resistance in the joystick.
Plug and Play
Plug & Play is a surreal mobile game developed by Rickenbach and fellow artist Michael Frei in Unity. The two developed the game out of a short film involving intimate relations between plugs and sockets, inspired by the binary nature of how computers operate.
Mirage
Mirage is another collaborative surreal project that ended up as a finalist in a 2012 Independent Game Festival. The idea came about through experimentation with collage– the strange creature controlled by the player attaches to itself additional body parts as the game is played. The game like many of his others is very heavily considered in its design aspect, but no part of its style takes away from the gameplay itself. Every aspect of the game, in fact, is heavily considered: its lack of enemies, the low poly geometry.
Rickenbach brings an interesting new take to the gaming community. With a variety of styles all derived from the varied themes in his projects, his unique background in architecture and often surreal products challenge the conventions people have about what makes a game playable.
More Games
https://mariov.ch/project/krautscape
