Described as a "Massively Multiplayer Story Game", Cloud Chamber is if nothing else an interesting experiment. The "aim" of the game, and I put that in quotes because it's hard to be sure of anything with it, is an investigation into a murder and a mysterious signal. The general story goes something like this: forty-something years ago a lady called Ingrid Petersen, who along with her husband Gustav started scientific research company The Petersen Institute, discovered the aforementioned signal hidden in space. This was apparently covered up by Gustav and she was eventually murdered. Now a group led by their daughter Kathleen are investigating her death, and that's where you come in. The story brings in elements of astrophysics, CERN, real Cloud Chamber experiments and footage from the European Space Agency.
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| The videos are actually pretty convincingly acted and professionally produced |
The way you go about investigating is by watching a lot of live-action videos, all quite professionally produced with actors from the likes of Game of Thrones and Casino Royale, and then by discussing them with other players in the message board attached to each video. You can post your own theories or reply to others, Like various posts and form opinions on the video with the help of players. There are a few fake posters, some even seemingly from the various characters and others possibly attempting to draw you away from the scent. Basically it's all a big social discussion with all players offering their own ideas about the weird things going on, with players expected to do research into the topics being discussed rather than having it explained for them. Yes, it's basically an Alternate Reality Game, the type that Valve do every other Sale, except as a fully paid game that's hopefully a bit deeper and with more to chat about.
Crucially, there are no right answers and no solution here. While the general goal is to make a cool observation and get Liked which gives you access to a few locked videos (about 20% of them are closed off at the start), there is no way to conclude the investigation. Every part of the story is up for debate and left deliberately ambiguous. The developers are fully conscious of the fact that if there was a single solution then the second the game came out someone would spoil it for everyone and Cloud Chamber would be instantly dead. Debate and social interaction with other players is the real aim here, so if you're the type of person who needs to see an ending then steer clear - it's up to you to make your own conclusions, and the best you'll get from the game is a cautious "yes, that could be the answer, wink".
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| The game looks very pretty considering that having graphics is utterly irrelevant to it |
It's the presentation that stands out though. It'd be easy to make Cloud Chamber look dull and simple, just a long list of videos on a spreadsheet with no imagination put into the interface, but thankfully Investigate North haven't done that. The game's been designed like you're in a database, which is represented by a pretty landscape with floating picture "nodes" over certain areas. These nodes are the videos and you click on one to go to it, and the higher it is the more informative it is. Locked videos dominate the landscape from a high mountain, and considering how simple the game is it's all rather pretty. Furthermore I've mentioned how professional the videos look, fairly well acted and believable, but I haven't mentioned the music. Various atmospheric songs play when you're not watching from interesting bands who I admit I've never heard of, but then again Lula Rouge and Burial could be the most popular bands around right now and I'd still go "who?". It's quite cool certainly, although you can turn the music off at any point if you get sick of it (and of course it doesn't play when you're watching videos).
The content in Cloud Chamber is intended to be Season 1 of a larger story that's intended to go to around four or five seasons, so Investigate North are clearly hoping it's going to take off. For me it entirely depends upon three things: how much it costs, whether an interested audience attaches itself to the game and takes it seriously, and how long the discussion goes on for. In many ways it's got the same risks as an MMO - it needs a decent amount of paying punters to stick around and keep socialising to work. It's certainly difficult to judge in the case of Cloud Chamber because it's just so different from every other type of game. It could be a lot of fun, but all the fun relies on there being other people to talk to and exchange theories with. Cloud Chamber's going to be out later this month, so we'll soon see if it works or not.
Most Anticipated Feature/Element: The audience. At the moment of course there isn't really one since the game's not out, so without that I'm missing out on a large part of the game.
