A light touch

The surreal, minimalist beauty of adventure A Light In Chorus

The art graduates asking players to join the dots

Sonar scans of shipwrecks, ambient doom metal and the work of philosopher Marshall McLuhan all number among exploration game Light In Chorus’s many inspirations. That’s according to one half of the team behind it.

Johnson, who’s based in London, is working with Oakland-based Matthew Warshaw. Both graduated in Fine Art from St Martins and now work in advertising CGI. As for the thinking behind their game, “We’re interested in how cultures relate to their natural landscapes,” says Johnson, “in their myths and stories, and how they’re communicated through architecture and technology.”

A Light In Chorus is somewhat reminiscent of The Unfinished Swan, if not visually then conceptually. The challenge is finding ways to navigate its beautiful point-cloud environment.

“Aside from being super pretty, making almost everything out of points leaves a lot of space for players to reinterpret what they’re seeing,” Johnson says. “Objects rendered in this style can be easily reconfigured into different shapes and states, which allows the player to author their own experience – at least partially.”

The effect is beautiful, and profoundly eerie as disparate elements, such as trees, neon signs and carrion, shift in and out of focus depending on how you move through the world. It’s a game that begs for further exploration, and we’ll be delving deeper soon.

Eliott Johnson,

A