Unravel

About

Unravel is an upcoming platform video game developed by Coldwood Interactive for the Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One systems, in which the player solves physics-based puzzles by controlling an anthropomorphic yarn doll named Yarny.

Gameplay

The player navigates levels by controlling the protagonist Yarny, a small doll made of twine that slowly unravels as it moves. The unraveled yarn can subsequently be interacted with, allowing the player to solve physics-based puzzles in a variety of ways. According to Coldwood Interactive’s creative director Martin Sahlin, the yarn is meant to metaphorically represent the way walking away from love makes people emotionally unravel.

Online History

On June 15th, 2015, Unravel was announced during the Electronic Arts press conference at the 2015 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). That day, the Unravel Game YouTube channel uploaded the announcement trailer to YouTube, where it gained over 380,000 views in the first 48 hours (shown below).

Martin Sahlin’s E3 Presentation

During the game’s announcement at E3, Coldwood Interactive creative director Martin Sahlin^[4] explained the inspiration behind the game’s mechanics and showed off his homemade Yarny doll (shown below). That day, a video of the presentation reached the front page of the /r/videos^[1] and /r/gaming^[2] subreddits, where many Redditors noted they found Sahlin’s nervous shaking and emotional vulnerability very endearing.

That day, several Tumblr^[9]^[10] users posted image macros and fan arts referring to Sahlin as “Yarn Man,” many of which were archived on the Meme Documentation Tumblr^[3] blog (shown below, left, middle). On June 16th, Sahlin posted several tweets^[6]^[7]^[8] expressing his gratitude to his new fans (shown below, right). The following day, The Daily Dot^[5] published an article titled “How ‘Yarn Guy’ Instantly Won Over the Internet at E3,” highlighting many notable tweets and fan arts dedicated to Sahlin.