At this year’s Global Game Jam, hosted locally by the GAMBIT Game Lab at MIT, I had the opportunity to work with a fantastic team to produce a new game, Canopy of Shadows, in about 24 working hours in the lab.

Canopy of Shadows serves up our interpretation of the GGJ’s theme this year (“Ouroboros“, the snake which eats its own tail) as an unconventional platform game with a serious psychological twist. Is that the player’s own ghost giving chase as the same level plays over again? Or is there more to the story?

The game’s mood of haunted self-discovery called for something beyond familiar platformer music: the player passes through terrain reflecting a descent through dystopic visions of society, self, and ultimately the elemental forces of nature and death.

I will post a playable, embedded version of the game and/or a gameplay video here when it is available. In the meantime, here’s a quick mix of music I contributed. Four minutes of symphonic/electronic suspense!