Tag: off-peak

The Norwood Suite
News

Making videogames inspired by New York’s musical improv scene

Greg Heffernan (aka Cosmo D) is making videogames unlike anyone else right now. He attributes it to two things: his early efforts to visualize music, and his background among the New York music scene. The first game he made, Saturn V (2014), turned the track of the same name by Heffernan’s band Archie Pelago into a virtual space. It was meant as a creative experiment: Heffernan said that he always thought of the music he created as a window into his head. By turning “Saturn V” into a 3D space he calcified that idea. Players could wander around a “vertical…
The Norwood Suite
News

The creator of Off-Peak is making another uncanny museum

Early last year, independent game maker Cosmo D came bursting onto the scene with Off-Peak (2015), a bizarre exhibition of artifacts that is museum, musical, and story all at once. It threw you into a train station on the very edge of reality and gave you a task to do, begging you not be distracted by the infinite staircases or the inexplicable, repeating figures. Like lots of games, it was a “love letter to a lot of things,” and like lots of games, it evokes the desire to re-explore. Luckily, Cosmo’s new game The Norwood Suite is being realized in the same…
Off-Peak
Feature

Speak Up, Off-Peak

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. Mad Max. Fallout 4. Star Wars Battlefront. In a year of stunning videogame landscapes—or at least landscapes that are mildly pleasing, so long as you enjoy dull, pretty pictures—Off-Peak, by Cosmo D, is exceptional. Its train station cum art gallery is an evocation of art versus functionality, of a world and an industry where talented creators are trained to become commodities. Musicians are gathered here. Artwork and posters adorn the walls. Above you hangs a life size sculpture of a blue whale. Around you, people of all shapes, sizes and skin colours sip coffee and…