UNDER A STAR CALLED SUN

Cecile Richard

Choose your own price AVAILABILITY Released

WEBSITE https:// haraiva.itch.io/under-a-star-called-sun

I’m a sucker for a beautiful spaceship. Every pixel is where it should be. My bunk is slightly unmade. A coffee steams prettily, both from afar and on closer inspection. Plants gently sway under fans for ventilation. I gaze out of an asymmetrical window to a small mess of stars that are winking on and off. I could spend this whole page describing the expansive, interstellar vessel, but I should allow you to discover it for yourself. It’s a treat. Should a spaceship-for-one not be smaller, more efficient? For narrative purposes, not when you’re small and on a trajectory that cannot be changed.

Created for Liminal’s Glitch Festival and free to play in your browser on itch.io, Under a Star Called Sun isn’t about a large and beautiful spaceship or even (really) space. It is simply a conversation between characters, so personal that I wouldn’t want to interpret it for you in any terms, except to say that it contains content that is highly relatable. One line of dialogue reads, “Who do you blame for misfiling a memory in the filing cabinets of your brain?” Another, simply, “Over and over and over and over.” I feel privileged to have been briefly privy to another’s experience of loss.

Solo designer, Cecile Richard, told us they aren’t a composer, yet their music is beautiful. I’ve been listening to it, while writing, and the loop is cleverly obscured by complex textures and, occasionally, a single, descending bassline, functioning as a kind of grand, sad, anacrusis. Melodic elements seem to sometimes depict stars then, other times, are a clever interweaving of two complimentary, contrapuntal threads. I enjoy recommending these kinds of “coffee break games” to everyone I know. In only five minutes of play, I feel like I’ve undertaken a vast and very meaningful journey.