iblard is a beautiful game, pure & simple. the gameplay is very minimal -- you collect some items & kind-of-sort-of battle foes, but most of your time is spent slowly puzzling your way through the landscape -- but i think the inspiration behind it & its short & sweet runtime make it a fun experience regardless.

the game is based loosely on the 18th century classic gulliver's travels ( hence "laputa" ) and strongly on the artworks of the artist naohisa inoue, who worked at studio ghibli for a time. the gallery feature provided in the game's menu shows off what i believe are his paintings -- very impressionistic & surreal, captivating in the imaginative worlds they conjure & almost overwhelming in depth; it's no surprise to me that they'd inspire a work so directly as iblard. and although i think iblard succeeded in embodying the kind of fantastical whimsy inoue's paintings fronted, i also think the technology kind of limits the experience: you aren't really able to "explore" as much as i'd like to, which is a shame given how artistically driven the game's visual direction is, and some of the textures & models are difficult to parse, lessening the viewing experience.

but i still think this was magical. truly. the music choice is sublime, i love the camera work, i love how calming-yet-disorienting the world is ... and i think the story is sweet too. it's a very simple journey of self discovery, but kind of in the style of wizard of oz, where you're transported somewhere unearthly & forced to grow -- and whether or not this place was real is irrelevant, as what matters most is how it changed you for the better. i like it a lot!

information is difficult to find on this title, as it was only given a fan-translated english patch in 2023, but i'm curious if inoue was involved at all in iblard's creation, whether by directly contributing art or just giving the crew the "go ahead" to make it. given that he made a film by the same name a decade later, the answer is probably yes; otherwise, i think i'd have some issue with the art direction of the game coping so heavily from another artist's style.

but that's all to be said, really. it's a uniquely beautiful game, and we're lucky us english speakers can experience it's little story now!