A leap from the plinth lands on that familiar bed of sloping sand. The floor has a bit of texture to it, of sliding grit and twinkling silicate. The world is a big channel around us, tubing down, down, down through the clouds. In the distance is the familiar shadow of the mountain, but before that paths to choose at speed, glowing lenses of light to pass through, and at the end, as the rushing of wind becomes overwhelming, two giant doors slowly open, just because we have arrived.
This is Sky: Children of the Light, the latest game from Thatgamecompany. And it is also a great moment from Journey, the studio’s dreamy, religiously-inclined mega-hit from a few years back, though it feels like a whole era of video game history ago. The difference with Sky is not just that the moth-brown traveller has traded their scarf for a cape, or can be decked out with different hairstyles. The difference is that this moment unfolded for me on the 14C, a bus that rattles along the Sussex coastline before swinging inland to pass the Royal Sussex Hospital. Thatgamecompany’s previous games delighted in filling very large screens in the living room. This one twinkles like a private grotto in your hands. It’s an adventure that plays out on your phone.
What kind of adventure? On paper, it sounds very different: smartphone-based, free-to-play, if not quite an MMO then at least a live game that changes over time and allows you to mingle with hundreds of other players. In reality, it is business as usual for Thatgamecompany, at least over the course of the three or four hours I have put in so far – time which has allowed me, I gather, to get through about three-quarters of what counts as the story stuff that’s currently in the game. Business as usual for these guys means that the game is extremely beautiful on my iPhone screen, rounded hills of shimmering sand or waving grass, pads of cloud in the blue sky, a numinous mountain with a light on in the distance. The free-to-play stuff seems to be generous. There are two currencies, as far as I can tell, and a season pass, but a lot of what you can buy is cosmetic stuff and the main content has been entirely free so far. A good marker of how generous this game is, is that, after those three or four hours, I still don’t really know what the currencies do, and I haven’t found myself brought up sharp by a velvet rope. As for the live game, there is chatter of events to come, and there’s a quest giver at the starting hub, and I mingle with people in classic Journey style, communicating through emotes, bowing, nodding, singing, holding hands.
Source: Eurogamer Sky: Children of the Light is more tasteful epiphany from the makers of Journey