The Indie Game Magazine August 2014 | Issue 40 | Page 11

our previous mysteries – which is that community protects itself. It seems to be like real life: People who are active members of a club – any club – don’t put up with destructive behavior in their club. It’s the same, here. If somebody comes in and is destructive, they tend to receive a bunch of abuse flags, pretty quickly. Three flags and you’re banned. IGM: “Your father may or may not have murdered your mother, there may or may not be messages embedded in certain subatomic particles from space – and electronic music could be the key to the universe’s most enigmatic secrets…” That’s a pretty heavy introduction. Will there be a lighthearted or comedic aspect to character interactions as well, or is Cloud Chamber squarely focused on drama? Christian: Cloud Chamber is a sci-fi mystery. We do see some pretty funny comments in there - and I love that (it’s a little like police detectives cracking jokes as they walk around a crime scene). But Cloud Chamber is not a comedy. On the other hand, it’s not really our business to tell the players how to behave (unless they misbehave badly, and then they get banned). We supply everything you need to dream yourself into the mystery – the mood, the characters, what happened, something to think about … and we supply a playing field and ground rules – but it’s up to the players, how they want to use that. In a way, we’ve only provided 50 % of the game. The rest is up to you. IGM: There’s a lot of real science behind the story that drives Cloud Chamber. Can you talk a little bit about how you’ve spent the past few years researching astrophysics, and what that experience was like? Christian: Making Cloud Chamber has been the greatest journey of my life. For the first time, my team and I had complete freedom to make what we wanted to make – and to explore what we wanted to explore. I grew up with science – and without God. My mother is a microbiologist and my father is a geneticist - and both my sister and I were raised with this supremely rational view of the world: Humanity is a microbe on a rock, orbiting an unstable gas explosion. There is no life out there, there is no God. You are alone. (My parents didn’t use those exact words, but that was the basic deal.) My grandparents, on the other hand, were extremely religious. They had faith, a belief in the afterlife – and Interested in Reviewing Indie Game Software? IGM would love to publish your review of any software that can be used to develop future indie games. Contact us at [email protected] and let us know! The Indie Game Magazine | www.indiegamemag.com 11