Will Love Tear Us Apart? (WLTUA) is a free-to-play browser-game about relationships on the brink of breaking up. Inspired by Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart, the gamefollows the song in delivering a dark and frustrating perspective on love. Each verse in the song is represented by a level in the game.
WLTUA will be exhibited at the Upper Galleries, St. James Cavalier Centre for Creativity in Valletta as part of the Science in the City festival. It will be officially opened on Friday 27th September and will also be open during Notte Bianca, running until 6th October 2013.
Created by Gordon Calleja and developed by Mighty Box Games, an independent game development studio based in Malta, WLTUA underscores the Mighty Box’s mission to design and develop games with an emphasis, on innovation and experimentation.
The exhibition layout follows the structure of the game’s levels, each of which represents a verse from the song., The exhibition translates the game into a physical, spatial experiencebased on the thematic concerns of the game, and song, posing the question that underlines both: in such strained relationships should one keep attempting to save their love, or leave it behind. ‘Will love tear you apart’ the exhibition invites the public to appreciate how, while games do hold the ability to transform any art form into interactive experiences, it is rare to find a game inspired by poetry (the title screen).
Will Love Tear Us Apart was selected for the 2013 Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria,and it has been nominated for an Innovation Award at Montreal’s Festival du CinemaNouveau. Funded by the Malta Arts Fund, the project was released in May 2013, and wasfeatured in Rolling Stone, Spin Magazine, Repubblica.it, Kotaku, Polygon, amongst many other media.
The game is available at: www.willloveturnusapart.com and also on the game’s Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/willlovetearusapart
