Standing on the shoulders (and various other parts) of giants
Developer/publisher Strange Shift Studio
Format PC
Origin Canada
Release March 7
Matthieu Fiorilli spent over a decade working on visual effects for companies such as Industrial Light & Magic and Rodeo FX. Most recently he was creature technical director at Weta Digital, on films such as Avatar: The Way Of Water and Suicide Squad. In 2021, he decided to try his hand at game development. His first title is a creature feature of sorts, although one that shuns Hollywood violence in favour of a more cerebral approach.
“Shadow Of The Colossus left a big impression on me when I was young,” Fiorilli explains. Like Fumito Ueda’s classic, Chasing The Unseen introduces us to leviathans that inspire a sense of awe as they loom into view. It’s also possible to climb these colossal creatures, although here you cannot kill them. Instead, the focus is on exploration.
Another inspiration was Journey, a game Fiorilli admired for its way of “speaking without words”. Chasing The Unseen is similarly reticent to explain too much. Rather, it places you in the shoes of a young boy who is lost in surreal, dreamlike worlds without further elaboration – you’re aware he’s seeking something, but exactly what that is remains unclear. Fiorilli says he has drawn on Buddhism for some of the game’s ideas.
During our early moments with Chasing The Unseen, another influence becomes apparent: Breath Of The Wild. Holding the left trigger unfurls a cloth glider not unlike Link’s, although here it has a separate stamina meter that’s much smaller than the one for climbing. There’s also a limit to what you can climb: cliffs are not scalable, but trees and giant monsters are. Reaching the glowing light source that marks your goal requires scrambling up the writhing limbs of a giant, floating octopus, then leaping off at the right moment to reach a higher platform.
“I find them captivating,” says Fiorilli of his decision to include the colossal cephalopod. “The way they move their limbs around makes them so cool to look at.” Indeed, the octopus is hypnotising to watch as it glides lazily over your head, its tentacles constantly twisting and curling. Other behemoths, such as a giant snake and a jellyfish-inspired creature, await in the full game.
The strangely undulating and fragmented worlds, meanwhile, have been generated using fractals, something else Fiorilli finds captivating. He takes a fractal, fiddles around with the parameters until he finds a shape he likes, then grabs a section and moulds it into a level. “Fractals produce these organic shapes that would be really hard to create otherwise,” he says. “And since at the core they come from somewhat simple math, it’s a
