Cogs & Marvel has released Banshees: The Game, an homage to the Oscar-nominated film directed by Martin McDonagh and starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson.
The Irish-founded agency released the in-browser video game, based on "The Banshees of Inisherin", in honor of St. Patrick's Day. They even released a fake retro advertisement for the game.
According to Business & Finance, the Pac-Man-style maze game "puts you in the cracked leather shoes of an aging musician on a labyrinthine quest for 'a quiet pint.'
"On your way to the pub through the rocky roads, you must elude your former best friend, dodge an ornery Garda, avoid the unavoidable neighbor, and collect five bloody fingers – an 8-bit rendered reference to the film."
Banshees: The Game / Print ad / Cogs & Marvel / 2023 pic.twitter.com/5YndKZiXCo
— Cool Box Art (@CoolBoxArt) March 17, 2023
Cogs & Marvel’s Creative Director, Jon Hozier-Byrne said: "It was an interesting challenge. How can you tell a complex story in the simplest narrative form?”
He added: “St Patrick’s Day, like the film which inspired us, is an exploration of Irish socio-cultural identity. For one day a year, political and historical baggage is cast aside, leaving only bright green hats and drinking. We wanted to apply the same kind of dramatic over-simplification to such rich cultural material.
“There was something really fun about taking such a dark, atmospheric piece of storytelling and representing it through the saturated optics of retro gaming. That juxtaposition is very entertaining to me,” said Hozier-Byrne.
“As an experiential agency, we wanted to create a novel piece of interactive storytelling that would appeal to and resonate with a global audience. As well as celebrating a film that has real cultural importance, and of which I’m personally a huge fan, 'Banshees: The Game' was a fascinating exercise in exploring how you can reimagine an amazing story and tell it in a new and unexpected way.”
Banshees: The Game is now available to play at bansheesthegame.com.
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