This is the latest in the series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.

Somewhere in the region of the demoscene and modern game jam is Noctuelles, home of mysterious New Zealander Orihaus and the ‘strange places’ he calls ‘games’. Ghostly ‘megastructures’ of stark, sometimes procedurally generated geometry, his Unity-powered projects can seem a million light years from purported genres including flight sim and survival horror. Then you get Xaxi, “a virtual memory palace of sorts, designed to teach Aliceffekt’s Conlang Traumae, and examine the possibilities of learning and memory in interactive virtual environments.”

All of which begs the question: is Orihaus really happy making places for their own sake? We, of course, are getting comfortable with the idea, funding and exploring worlds and ideas that often far outstretch any explicit gameplay – and why not? But what does the future hold for Noctuelles, and what are we supposed to think of it in the meantime? … [visit site to read more]