---
name: Bleached Ruin
slug: bleached-ruin
tags: [team ico, fumito ueda, ruins, bloom, desaturated, minimalist, melancholy, companion, scale, no hud]
best_for: [companion and escort games, climbing and traversal, boss-as-level games, quiet exploration, short wordless story games]
seen_in: []
---
# Bleached Ruin
## The idea
A small, quiet figure crossing a vast, ancient place that has outlived whoever built it. Stone, moss and sky are
washed out by soft, overbright light, so the world feels half-remembered, like a photograph left in the sun. There
is almost nothing on screen: no HUD, few words, one companion and one kind of threat. What you feel comes from
scale, light, silence and the way two bodies move together: a hand held across a gap, a horse whistled for, a
giant creature that may or may not listen. It's Fumito Ueda's "design by subtraction": take away everything that
doesn't make you feel the place, and leave the player alone with it.
## Touchstones
- **_Ico_ (Team Ico, 2001)**: a horned boy leads a pale girl, Yorda, by the hand out of a vast empty castle on a
sea cliff, chased by smoky shadow creatures. One of the first games to use bloom, with soft light, keyframed
(not motion-captured) animation and no HUD at all. Take hand-holding as the core verb, the castle as a puzzle
you see whole from its windows, and light as the colour of safety.
[More: Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ico)
- **_Shadow of the Colossus_ (Team Ico, 2005; remade by Bluepoint, 2018)**: a rider and his horse cross an
empty Forbidden Land to kill sixteen colossi, each a fusion of rock, earth, fur and architecture, "neither animal
nor machine". Desaturated colour, heavy bloom, motion blur and partial HDR; Ueda wanted "the density of a
painting". Take the boss as a level you climb, the long silent ride between fights, and grey-green tones pushed
to pale.
[More: Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_Colossus)
- **_The Last Guardian_ (genDESIGN and SIE Japan Studio, 2016)**: a boy and Trico, a giant feathered beast Ueda
describes as "a mixture of a cat, a dog, a bird", escape a ruined valley of towers and bridges. Trico doesn't
always do what you ask. Take a companion with a will of its own, fur and feathers as the softest thing in a
stone world, and the creature's eyes as the emotional centre of the frame.
[More: Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Guardian)
- **Giorgio de Chirico, _The Nostalgia of the Infinite_ (1912–13) and _Mystery and Melancholy of a Street_
(1914)**: Ueda painted the Ico cover after the first, saying "the surrealistic world of de Chirico matched the
allegoric world of Ico". Take long raking shadows, arcades and towers under a deep sky, tiny figures, and the
stillness of a place where something has just happened or is about to.
[More: MoMA](https://www.moma.org/artists/1305)
- **_Another World_ (Éric Chahi, 1991)**: flat-shaded polygon scenes, cinematic cuts and no interface. Ueda
played it as a teenager and names it as the source of Ico's cutscenes and missing HUD. Take staging over
explanation: the camera tells the story and the screen stays clean.
[More: Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/233550/Another_World__20th_Anniversary_Edition/)
- **_Prince of Persia_ (Jordan Mechner, 1989)**: rotoscoped from film of Mechner's brother, so every run, hang and
climb has weight. Another of the games Ueda names. Take climbing and hanging that feel physical, and danger
that comes from the architecture.
[More: Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Persia_(1989_video_game))
- **_Galaxy Express 999_ (Leiji Matsumoto, manga 1977–81)**: a boy rides a space train with Maetel, a tall,
mysterious woman who protects him. Ueda cites it for the protective bond at Ico's heart. Take the melancholy of a
journey shared with someone you don't fully understand.
[More: Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Express_999)
- **The American Southwest: the Grand Canyon and Death Valley**: the landscapes behind the Forbidden Land, which
Ueda visited. Take bleached rock, strata, mesas, heat haze and the emptiness that makes a lone rider readable at
any distance.
[More: Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Death_Valley_National_Park)
- **Caspar David Friedrich, _Wanderer above the Sea of Fog_ (c. 1818)** _(our addition; Ueda hasn't cited it)_:
a lone figure, back turned, before a sublime landscape. Take the figure as a scale bar for the world, and fog
that hides as much as it shows.
[More: Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caspar_David_Friedrich_-_Wanderer_above_the_Sea_of_Fog.jpeg)
- **_Journey_ (thatgamecompany, 2012)** _(an heir: Jenova Chen calls Ico one of his biggest influences)_: a robed
figure crosses a desert of ruins toward a mountain, with one stranger for company and no words. Take how far
subtraction carries into warm colour and a single, unnamed companion.
[More: Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/638230/Journey/)
## The core
1. **Subtract.** No HUD, few words, one companion, one kind of threat. Leave space empty on purpose; if a thing
feels unfinished, cut it rather than decorate it.
2. **Light is the material.** Soft, overbright, bloomed light over desaturated stone, moss and sky. Whites bleed,
shadows stay soft, and colour is held back so the light reads.
3. **Tiny figure, ancient vastness.** Scale is the emotion. Towers, cliffs and colossi dwarf you, and the camera
pulls back to make sure you notice.
4. **A bond told through bodies.** Hands, reins, fur and feathers. The relationship lives in animation and
touch, not dialogue or meters.
5. **Ruins without explanation.** The builders are long gone. Architecture, rock and creature fuse together, and
nobody tells you the history.
## Dials
| Dial | One end | Other end |
|---|---|---|
| Space | Enclosed rooms, stairs and bridges (Ico) | Open plains to the horizon (Shadow of the Colossus) |
| Companion | A hand you hold and lead (Yorda) | A creature with its own will that you persuade (Trico) |
| Threat | Smoky, faceless shadows that steal your companion | A colossus you climb, the threat as terrain |
| Light | Misty dawn haze, green-grey | Glaring white desert noon |
| Reality | Grounded rock, moss and masonry | de Chirico's metaphysical stillness: long shadows, impossible arcades |
| Camera | Fixed and framed like a painting (Another World) | Free and swinging out to show scale |
| Score | Wind, water and footsteps only | A swelling orchestra when it matters |
## Directions to try
- **Piazza of the infinite**: a town of de Chirico arcades and long afternoon shadows, empty but for you and one
other figure who is always just around the corner.
- **Mesa colossus**: Death Valley light and a creature made of canyon strata that you only recognise as alive when
it stands up.
- **Hand in hand**: an escort game where the only verbs are walk, call and hold, and letting go is the danger.
- **Nest and feather**: a vertical ruin climbed on the back of a giant animal that half obeys, reading its moods
from its ears and eyes.
- **Wanderer's tower**: Friedrich's lone figure above the fog as the whole game: one climb, one view, one choice.
## Traps
- A HUD, minimap, quest markers or damage numbers. If the player needs to know, show it on a body or in the world.
- Saturated, clean, high-contrast colour: it reads as a fantasy theme park, not a forgotten place.
- Filling the empty space with collectables, enemies or foliage. The emptiness is the content.
- Explaining the lore. A codex entry kills the mystery the ruins are there to hold.
- A companion that behaves like a tool, perfectly obedient and expressionless; the bond needs friction and warmth.
## Starting points
`tokens.json` holds a pale Forbidden Land palette (bleached sky, weathered stone, moss and a cyan sigil glow), plus
variants for Ico's misty castle morning, The Last Guardian's nest of feathers and stained-glass eyes, a de Chirico
piazza and a white desert noon. Type is a carved, spaced classical capital for titles and a quiet book serif for
the few words there are. These are suggestions.
## Seen in
Nothing yet.