LC 71 NY DZ 13 DW, Doug Wheeler (2013)
Yesterday I was deeply hungover after riffing at bars with my pal Fergus, so I took a 40-minute walk out to Copenhagen Contemporary .
Aftershock, James Turrell (2021)
The exhibits on show at the time were very focussed on space, light, a sense of deep physicality and of being within unnatural spaces (standing in a colour void, trying not to cough and as such ruin the sense of immersion for everyone else present). It was a great wee trip out, but almost as much as the works on show I was drawn so much to the construction of the spaces -between- the works.
I think about these spaces because they are so nakedly constructed as framing devices for the works ahead - to build anticipation and set the stage for what you're about to percieve. They are plaster walls and undecorated floorboards to be built up and torn down, real-world greyboxes with the same strange sense of scale being "wrong" that you'd get in an amateur Source map.
This stairwell mostly just had big Mirror's Edge energy.
I did also pop into the Kunsthal Charlottenborg later, when my phone had died after burning power on Gundam podcasts. It was a much more traditional gallery space, but with sharp divides between blacked-out video rooms and stark white halls. They had a room with NFTs that I couldn't tell was Pro- or Anti-.
Maybe it's the small part of my brain that still wonders where life would have gone if I went full art student back in the day. But while level design conversations often fuss around pacing and introducing mechanics, I strongly also feel like space and light are a part of the designer's toolset, not just environment artists down the line. It's why I struggle to "purely" greybox (or orangebox, as Source so often may be).
Mood is a mechanic. Light is a tool, for setting the tone or guiding a player. A flatly lit set of cubes might get your playtesters accustomed to the raw, mechanical experience of progressing through your space, but games don't exist on a raw, mechanical level. You want your space to stick in their minds. You want your space to make people feel grounded, or awe-struck, or terrified, or oppressed, or.... anything but forgettable? Galleries have been doing this forever, modern art or otherwise, and I've a lot of lessons to take back from CC next time I fire up Hammer.
... that, or I'm just a hungover game designer thinking too much about some pretty lights she saw in a warehouse.
This is a little bit of a tangent but I wanted to write a post to recommend this game to you anyway, so why not do it here?
(For the record, 'liminal spaces' are defined as transitional places, places between destinations. but the places themselves usually aren't the destinations. hallways, tunnels (and you could argue elevators are also liminal spaces)).
INFRA (currently 75% off, https://store.steampowered.com/app/251110/INFRA/)
is exactly that. It's a source engine walking simulator game that's graphically so well designed that it took me a few hours in until I noticed it was actually a source engine game. If you thought Valve did a good job designing hl2 levels, INFRA shoves them out of the way and shows how powerful the Source engine actually is.
In INFRA, most of your time is spent in places between places. Most other people you see are on the 'normal' side of the spaces, aka "where people are meant to go". But not you. You're tasked with surveying engineering in the city, which unfolds deep secrets in a storyline that's as heavy with plot twists as it is with endless tunnels, pipes and sewers.
Sometimes you'll surface, but again, mostly in places where people either aren't meant to go, or where people won't be at the time of day (past midnight in a little village, a local monumental castle, inside an abandoned office building, etc)
One thing to note is that the storyline is actually really long. I kept thinking "surely I'm nearing the end of the story now, right?" only to discover I wasn't even halfway through.
It has, iirc, over 20 hours of story. Multiple endings, too. And many, many little sidelines / detours to figure out more about the story.
By the end of the game, you're not even sure if you're still playing the same game.
One steam review mentions this:
If you're a completionist and a purist (no spoiling/looking anything up), this game is either nightmare fuel or an illegal substance to you. There are secrets that are very, very easily missed especially considering how large the maps are[.] (...) Remember how I mentioned my playthrough clocking in at 10 hours, minus the reloads? This is a 10 chapter game, and there are multiple secrets that are only possible if you've performed secret actions several chapters earlier on that same save. There are secrets that still haven't been solved.
INFRA ranks fairly high on my list of favorite games. It's got unexpectedly high quality for an indie game. The voice acting is a bit lackluster, the story is a bit confusing sometimes and some elements of the game design definitely could have been better, but the beautifully designed environments definitely make up for it. And the Finnish humor that's all over the place, mostly shown through environmental storytelling just adds to the experience.
(Seriously, look at how detailed that skybox is. Roads have cars rolling by, there's planes and zeppelins in the distance, hundreds of different buildings and landmarks of places you'll visit later)
If you ever wanted to urbex / trespass but couldn't, this is a game for you. This also is a game for you if you like weird games.
Note: This game contains some horror elements, though they're usually not in-your-face, but more on the level of "gman looking at you from a balcony that you won't notice if you're not actively looking at it". There definitely are some bits where the horror elements are very in your face, but those are part of side 'quests'. No jumpscares iirc.
