Serenity

Most games aspire either to thud-and-blunder or cuteness -- or, as with Zelda, sometimes both at once. It's exceedingly rare to find a game you might legitimately characterize as, well -- a tone poem.

In The Crossing, the screen is filled with a beautifully lit forest crossing. Deer spring nobly from left to right across the screen, but at screen middle is a chasm. Left to their own devices, they will plunge, sadly, to their deaths.

2006 IGF Winner/Student Showcase

Cloud is a conscious attempt to create a that induces feelings of peace and serenity--unlike most games which seek to create edge-of-the-seat tension.

The backstory: You are a child, sick in the hospital with a long term illness, and the game is your dreams of flying amid the clouds. In addition to flying, you can manipulate the clouds, gathering them together and laying them out in patterns. While you may enjoy that for its own sake, there's a traditional level-based structure to the game (just four levels--this is a student project, after all), and each level requires you to perform different tasks. Some involve building cloud structures in the sky; others, gathering clouds and pushing them against clouds of pollution, causing the pollution to precipitate out in the form of rain.