Ministry of Broadcast: From Pixel to Collectable Art

Just like atoms or ones and zeros, pixels, are well hidden to the human eye. Yet, if you combine enough of the smallest controllable elements of a picture represented on a digital screen—of course craftily enough—you’ll get something bigger. A picture to be precise. Such, at least at the first sight, crude pictures have become a thing of their own in the far realms of the internet.

First, this was due to (in)ability of screens to display higher resolutions. Later, with the development in the digital industry, nobody can even spot a single pixel anymore. Yet, they are there! Pixels even underwent their own social experiment, called the Place, with over 1 million unique users coming to Reddit to form fractions, create black holes and of course pictures. Just observe the power of pixel here! Slowly, a new art genre was born – pixel art.

There are still modern computer games produced in such way, to evoke the nostalgic feeling people remember from playing on early consoles like Atari, or the first PC games – like Prince of Persia. But while the progress in the industry meant that these vintage games started to look almost like reality (like the latest Tomb Raider or other story-based games like Life Is Strange 2), there’s still a lot of people who like to go back and enjoy a bit of 2D pixel art gaming.

The biggest games at that time were so-called platformers—just like the original Prince of Persia (1989) or Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus—and to honour their spirit Prague-based agency Fuchs+Dachs have created a narrative-driven indie single-player game called Ministry of Broadcast, which despite being “pixely” hides a lot of details, hard work, and artistic skill.

The spine of the story is set in a country which seems to be divided by a Trump-like wall and the only way to get out of there is to cross the borders by winning in a TV reality show. Of course, in such regime, the overall atmosphere and mood are quite dark, inspired by Orwell’s famous novel 1984 and combined with the hypocritical glamour and evanescence of the modern-day TV reality shows. Despite these dark things lurking in the background, the game is funny, sarcastic, and isn’t afraid to wind up not only the game characters but the person behind the screen – the gamer.

Now, let’s focus on the main character. Although he is quite blurry (yes that’s because of all the intentional pixels), you’ll definitely able to spot some of his features – he is blatantly clumsy, and while he’s never sure he’s going in the right direction he is always super careful. But would you be able to imagine the detailed features like facial hair, zipper, large clumsy feet and hands, his overall, or even his little feathered friend? Probably not.

Here come Fuch+Dachs, two Serbian designers based in the Czech Republic, who have taken the main protagonist and created a collectable art figure design from the not-so-detailed original character. Moreover, they have added the hero’s little helper, the Crow. And when you study the work of Dušan Čežek and Sanja Čežek, you will notice their (bad?) habit of implementing birds in the games they creatively direct. We definitely don’t think that his cute little fella would be seen as a weakness. Do you?

As you can clearly see, the duo believes in “the good old-school players, to whom storytelling was equally important as the gameplay” and they introduce the crow as soon as you skip the initial story (intro). The black bird plays quite an important role in the game, as she punishes the players by telling them where they are, what the game is all about and also what’s their purpose. So, it comes as no surprise that the feathered friend has made its ‘cawing’ way not only to the gameplay but also into the collectable art figure. Fortunately, this way she won’t laugh at you, help you, or simply annoy you.

Let’s get down to business. A more detailed one. The Ministry of Broadcast presents their first collectable art figure on a small pedestal. The detailed figurine was revealed at the Tokyo Game Show at the end of September.

Below you can take a look at the whole process – from tiny pixel art, through render close-ups to the final figure look. If you like their work and want to support their love and energy for good design, you can pre-order the collectable or just visit Behance.net or Instagram pages of the designer duo, known as Fuchs+ Dachs. After inspecting the pixels more closely, and seeing the hero in all of his glory, we definitely want to give the game a go. To see if we’re still any good at platformers. How about you? Let us know how you did in the comments! You can pre-order and support the game here at its official site.