Cloud Chamber – Beta Review

[Phalanx]

I played the beta of Cloud Chamber rather obsessively last year so you can all feel free to consider the below a quick 'early access' review of sorts. I should mention that even though I know the developers, I am in no way affiliated with them (I am the editor and publisher of the Danish games magazine Gameplay).

If you like scientific research, astrophysics, mysticism, philosophy and conspiracies, there is a very good chance that you will have a good experience with Cloud Chamber. It is quite unlike anything else that I ever played and even though it bears certain similarities to ARGs, it does not really fit into that genre.

The 'game' is basically about figuring out what a weird signal, apparently from space, could be and how it affects the characters that you follow. It is the kind of game you either connect with or not. If you come seeking traditional gameplay and an 'easy' experience where you don't really have to contribute, chances are that you will probably not find a whole lot to like about the game.

However, if you love throwing crazy ideas out into the open, researching your own and others' theories and engaging with other users in order to try and solve the mystery, you might very well be sucked into the game as much as I was when I played it.

Think of it as a Reddit-style game experience where you debate plot lines and mysteries with people, just as you would when you sit and discuss your favorite TV shows or movies – that is probably the best comparison that I can come up with. Remember back when the TV show Lost was running and everybody went nuts trying to figure out what was happening? That dynamic is basically what the creators of Cloud Chamber have gamified, and it works amazingly well.

Personally, I was blown away by Cloud Chamber. I am a complete science and science fiction nut (the kind who has a high-powered telescope on his rooftop and loves Arthur C. Clarke) so it really struck a nerve and compelled me to read crazy amounts of wikis, research papers, technological NASA articles and whatnot in order to gain a clearer picture of what was going on, as I progressed and was fed more and more tidbits and little mysteries.

I can safely say that no other game ever made me teach myself as much as Cloud Chamber did – and that, I believe, is its greatest merit. Everything is rooted in reality so if you commit to the experience, you will attain a lot of useful knowledge about our current space research and the universe in general.

However, the level of participation will differ from person to person, and I like that you don't have to spend as much time and energy as I did in order to enjoy the experience. I am sure that you could even get away with just reading a lot in the game and upvoting good posts in order to progress – you just might not get the full experience or access to all the information levels.

At any rate, I hope a lot of other people get to try it out – if nothing else, then to discuss and debunk all of my weird theories in there. ;)

[Ashyne]

Can you tell me about how the massive multiplayer will work with the mystery theme? Because all the massively multiplayer games I know are persistent, online worlds with ongoing participation and no ending. Since this game is massively multiplayer, does this mean that all the stories that we unlock, discover and solve are just speculation, and that the real mystery of the game will never, ever be solved until the developers decide to shut down the game? Because if the mystery is solved by players, that would mean the game has effectively being completed, hence the massive multiplayer would not make sense anymore, as it would be pointless to continue playing.

[christian]

Your thinking is spot on.

You will never find a note inside Cloud Chamber that says "the butler did it", but if you've been paying attention to the evidence (film fragments, journals, diaries and so on) then you should get a pretty good idea of what happened by the end.

We've designed this first season to deliver a satisfying ending to the question of what happened to Ingrid … but you'll have to work with others (or at least read their theories) … because the answer will demand that you see connections between several pieces of evidence/media.

The question of exactly what exactly the signal is - that may take a little longer ...