It’s always good to see innovative, interesting, or just plain offbeat steps taking in the gaming world, and Cloud seems to be all three of those things. Cloud is a free game that comes from the University of Southern California’s Game Innovation Lab and it certainly looks promising so far. In the game you control a young boy who can fly around and gather clouds. Simple enough. Some levels have you trying to create vast pictures in the sky out of the clouds, while others have you pitting the clouds you’ve gathered up against ominous black smog clouds in an attempt to clear the skies (doing so produces rainstorms and lightning). While the game currently feels a little more like a sandbox environment than a complete game, it seems like they’ve got some good ideas. Flying around and playing with the cloud physics is a lot of fun and while the graphics aren’t anything ground breaking they’re nicely stylized and fit the game well. One of its best features though is the impressive score which is symphonic and lends the perfect atmosphere (ha!) to zipping around in the clouds. This one is definitely worth checking out, and its a work in progress so it’ll be interesting to see where it goes.

Comments

Comment by Neal on 2005-12-01 13:56:55 +0000

I looked at this for a second the other day and couldn’t figure out how to move the clouds. What am I doing wrong?

Comment by Will on 2005-12-01 21:31:21 +0000

If you hold down the left mouse button so that the camera zooms way out, then the bright colored clouds will stick to you as move (as long as you don’t move too fast). If you hold down Shift while doing this you can capture clouds and store them. Then if you hold down Ctrl and the left mouse button you can release them as you fly.