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[Show Online]( [Report Spam]( [Skip to content]( to site index]( [Arts]( - - Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT]( You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. Critiquing India’s Politics With Absurdist Games Studio Oleomingus’s video games, often inspired by literature and architecture, are colorful and playful examinations of some of India’s darkest chapters. Listen to this article · 8:34 min [Learn more]( - - [Two men, one wearing headphones and one holding a video game controller, look up at a screen with colorful coral-like shapes.] The newest video game by Studio Oleomingus, It Takes a Long Time to Grow a Mountain, was displayed at the India Art Fair in February.Credit...Studio Oleomingus By Rollo Romig Rollo Romig, who reported from Vapi, India, is the author of a book about the rise of autocracy in the country. Aug. 28, 2024 It is not unusual for steady rain to fall in the video game worlds of Studio Oleomingus. And it is easy to see why if you visit the studio’s lead writer and designer, Dhruv Jani, at his home office in Vapi, a small city on the western coast of India, at the height of the monsoons. “This is the only season where it gets so gloomy outside that I feel right at home no matter what time of day it is,” Jani said with a laugh last month, on a day when it had been raining continually for more than a week. “Like you’re living in an Edgar Allan Poe story.” The rain-soaked video game on his computer screen, [Folds of a Separation](, is just one of many that Studio Oleomingus has created about India’s postcolonial history and its contemporary political climate. Inspired by political prisoners, particularly [a group known as the Bhima Koregaon 16](, the game uses a maze as its central mechanic: The player alters each screen’s layout to help two tiny figures escape. Upon the completion of each puzzle comes another section of a poem that Jani wrote from the perspective of a person writing to a lover in prison. I will come see you when they let me. Until then close your eyes and I will walk with you, even if it is only through your memories of a country we no longer recognize. Image Folds of a SeparationCredit...Studio Oleomingus Image Folds of a SeparationCredit...Studio Oleomingus As with all of Studio Oleomingus’s games, the visuals offer a playful contrast to its melancholy themes. The backgrounds are piled high with impossibly oversize household objects — pressure cookers, spray bottles, teakettles. The bright color palette, Jani said, was inspired by cheap gum wrappers, screen-printed matchbox covers from the 1990s and “[those Lux underwear advertisements]( that got painted underneath bridges.” It was this distinctive use of color and scale that first caught the attention of Jamin Warren, a founder of the video game magazine Killscreen who now runs Gameplayarts, a Los Angeles gallery and education center focused on video game art. --------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and [log into]( your Times account, or [subscribe]( for all of The Times. --------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? [Log in](. Want all of The Times? [Subscribe](. Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT]( Site Index Site Information Navigation - [© 2024 The New York Times Company]( - [NYTCo]( - [Contact Us]( - [Accessibility]( - [Work with us]( - [Advertise]( - [T Brand Studio]( - [Your Ad Choices]( - [Privacy Policy]( - [Terms of Service]( - [Terms of Sale]( - [Site Map]( - [Help]( - [Subscriptions]( - [Manage Privacy Preferences](