city::ephemera
A downloadable ephemera for Windows and macOS
Explore the hazy::temporality of city::ephemera
A short experience inspired by artists Yayoi Kusama and photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. The experiene will end after 7 minutes::20 seconds.
Music - Winter journal by Blear Moon Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Download
Install instructions
For Mac users. If you can't open the application, try to download it through the official itch.io app. If that doesn't work, this guide from alienmelon may help.
This experience intentionally has no menus and method to quit in-game. The application will automatically close after 7 minutes and 20 seconds.
Development log
- Nice Gear Games wrote about city::ephemeraDec 15, 2022
Comments
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truly a breathtaking experience...
Very unique and intresting game, i like it! I hope this guy makes more games like this
Hopeful even when bleak
Beautiful! i think it changed how i look at games
I feel asleep... and loved every second of it. Amazing work!!!
perfect dreams..
it is like a dream
Reminded me of walking through Seattle on a foggy day.
beautiful
Really beautiful and thought provoking. Thank you for sharing this.
beautiful. sound is so lush and evocative. i really liked the feeling of the world shifting around me as i walk, and the aspect ratio is so striking -- sort of surprising more games don't play with that! was reminded a bit of this oldish game "three short nights in sin city" which hopefully one day gets made public again, and which you might like in the unlikely event it does! (also has black and white orbs everywhere haha, but in that one each orb emits a sine wave tuned to a different frequency so you get these really wonky harmonies as you wander between them)
https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/10840
anyways i really loved this, thanks for making it :)
Hey, i really wanna play this game, but to see the page i need a password, do you know it?
i don't unfortunately :( hopefully one day it goes public again!
awesome experience!! one of the best walking sims i ever played
beautiful experience, i loved the music
It's not really a game like I thought, but it's more of an experience. This game is so calming and relaxing. If you're really stressed or tired, I would recommend playing this.
Why the orbs??
I do not get it... for my part, clipping through the spheres made it very jarring as an experience.
love it, heaven for my ears and eyes
its like childhood memory
Look mom,im here, at the very top of the Arasaka tower...
I just dont get it, eveyone else seems to have some surreal spectacle reminding them of past memories or something. It just made me feel... claustrophobic? Im not sure, I just felt uneasy
Everyone experiences art differently. I've heard people mention that they feel that same sense of unease and claustrophobia as well. Like the city is suffocating them in the same way that it does in real world. I'm happy that you shared your thoughts.
I'm high af which usually makes me more sensitive to that kind of thing, and this was just... disappointing. round metal things and some big crystal towers in the middle, all wiped out and unviewable through a static filter.
This game makes me feel like I'm in a dream damn, very beautiful, love the music so much (my ears are in heaven now)
When I moved to New York City in the year 2000, I took a job a half a block from the World Trade Center. I loved to spend my lunch break under the Twin Towers. It was such an unreal landscape. I'd listen to ambient music on my headphones and sit next to a large orb-shaped sculpture in the center of the pavilion and look up; the towers were just so impossibly tall that they seemed to alter to laws of physics. They seemed to swallow sound and to make the world monochrome, and it was always so bright. I quit that job on September 7, 2001, and a few days later those memories were obliterated by much uglier scenes. This game resurrected those old sensations as intensely as if I'd gone back 23 years.
wow this was bittersweet to read
911!!!
I'm writing you in behalf of a group of students of the Complutense University of Madrid, in Spain. We are doing an investigation for a subject called "Conservation of New Media Art" and after some thought and research we found your game 'city:ephemera', which we think could be a good subject of study for our project.
We think this project has a lot of interest through the perspective of a work of new media art, as it relates to topics we are researching.
For our research we would need to be able to contact you as a team and anyone you think had a part in creating this project, as the objective of our work is to create a theoretical way of conserving this work, and we would need some further information about the way it was created, how it works, your intention at the time of creating it, etc.
We think this project could give you some positives as well, as we will give you all limited knowledge and experience on some strategies of how this type of art is being preserved as to right now; and also could give you a boost in the people you're reaching as our intention would be to publish the work somewhere public, so both other artists and researchers had access to it.
We'll be happy to hear back from you soon!
Thank you so much for your time,
Let us know if your team is interested in working with us, and we'll get in touch.
Bom, foi bem estranho, me fez pensar bastante sobre diversas coisas, nossa relação com as cidades, relações de poder, me fez lembrar sobre como é se sentir claustrofobico, confuso, perdido e no geral, tudo terminou na velocidade de uma musica, no final a vida deve ser assim né? passei o jogo inteiro querendo chegar no topo, desde o inicio, a partir de uma momento eu nem tinha mais um motivo, eu simplesmente uma ambição vazia mas depois que eu consegui, sinceramente eu tava tão vazio quanto quando eu comecei mas com a diferença de que agora eu tinha medo de cair e perder tudo sendo que eu não tinha nada, quanto mais alto eu subia mais eu não queria descer para no final, acabou, um fim tão vazio quanto o começo.
I truly wouldn't know how to describe this experience, so you should all just try for yourselves! I had a great time, and it made me think a lot about the relationship i have with the city i live in.
Such beautiful experience.
That was TRANSCENDANT. Like, holy shit! Beautiful.
(If anyone's wondering the game lasts around 7-8 minutes it seems like. So don't quit! There's some really stunning moments.)
This is very neat. Great atmosphere. Good job :)
there hasnt been a game in a while that has made me feel the way this one does. truly a cinematic masterpeice
when i saw this it gave me an idea of making the same thing but different
still dont know where to do 3d and make it pixels lol
非常好玩！推荐！*⁂((✪⥎✪))⁂*
Interesting game!
This made me cry. This touched me in a way nothing has in the last 6 months. Unbelievable. All I wish for in life is to create something that makes someone else feel like this has made me feel. I am stunned and in awe. From the bottom of my heart: Thank you.
This game reminded me of a dream i had some time ago. An ever chaning city almost like a labyrinth made of buildings I couldn't even see how high they reached. It made me feel small and lost and... alone between those weird shaped creatures that plagued the streets.
This let me experience that dream again in a new but familiar way, almost felt made for me (the game is obviously vague and fuzzy so this feeling can happen to most people experiencing it).
Also, the ending gave me chills. Nicely done.
this was beautiful! the soundtrack and that diffused textural noise, loved it.
Experiences like this are some of my favorites to happen upon on this website. The audio and visuals were engrossing, but what stood out the most to me was the creative use of the constantly changing 'frame'. Having the experience locked to a set time progression was also a clever idea, because it instilled a sense of urgency behind the exploration, knowing that it was all going to end soon. Fantastic work by everyone involved in this little project
(game starts at 2:22:07)It was interesting to see that the balls that initially bothered me, once I got up in the air, didn't bother me at all!
A soft, gray city to get lost in for a little while. The music, the lighting, and the visual textures all mesh perfectly. Loved how this piece ended.
Pretty damn cool! Gradual, very impactful changes in perception