Electric Nightmares

Our four part series about generative AI and its use in video games

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Weave Songs, Remake Worlds In Proteus Composer's Musical Adventure/Toy PANORAMICAL 

Otherworldly walking sim Proteus [official site] is very much an RPS favourite: a dreamy, good-natured, no-pressure place many of us retreat to when the shooting and the jumping and the icon-collecting gets too much. Half the reason for Proteus' joyfully calming effect is David Kanaga's prettily ambient soundtrack, and how perfectly it fits the evocative, wooly-edged art. In PANORAMICAL, which occupies a place between game and music tool, Kanaga's compositions move front and centre.

PANORAMICAL is a co-production with Argentine designer and Maker Fernando Ramallo, and also features contributions - both musical and environmental - from folk who worked on games including FRACT, Pixeljunk Eden, Samurai Gunn and Nuclear Throne.

Described as an interactive sensory journey, what you're doing is altering the environments you see through music, in a sort of composing/painting hybrid. Up to you whether you want peaceful dreamland or cacophonous thumping nightmareland, really. Or you can just explore and listen at your leisure. It is a difficult thing to describe in mere words, so let me show you instead:

There's also a PANORAMICAL Pro license which lets you use this for DJing or other public audiovisual performances, plus the PANORAMICAL Pod, a custom controller with a load of lovely dials to turn. Want.

It's quite a lovely thing all told, primarily as something to fiddle with and feel as though you're creating through simple willpower and low-key experimentation. It's out on Steam, Humble and Itch.io now.

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Proteus

PS3, PlayStation Vita, PC, Mac

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Alec Meer avatar

Alec Meer

Co-founder

Ancient co-founder of RPS. Long gone. Now mostly writes for rather than about video games.

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