''Linger in Shadows'' is a 2008 interactive art video game developed by Polish

demogroup Demogroups are teams of demosceners, who make computer based audio-visual works of art known as demos. Demogroups form a subculture collectively known as the demoscene. Groups frequently consist of students, young computer enthusiasts who spen ...

Plastic and published by

Sony Computer Entertainment Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC (SIE) is an American video game and digital entertainment company that is a major subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate Sony, Sony Group Corporation. It primarily operates the PlayStation brand of video game co ...

for the

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. It was first announced at Breakpoint 2008 in Germany. ''Linger in Shadows'' differs in an important aspect from many

demoscene The demoscene () is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off computer programmi ...

products in that it was published by

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on the

, who trademarked the name late 2007. Many news-sites which reported about the demo assumed that it was a tech-demo for a future game. This was denied during presentations at E3, although it was revealed that the title does feature interactivity.

Gameplay

The interactive parts were first showcased at the Realtime Generation festival in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

by lead programmer Michal "Bonzaj" Staniszewski; it was revealed that the interactive part of the demo is essentially the main storyline, with added interaction using the

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such as user-controlled camera and the ability to scratch back and forth in the timeline. It also allows the player to play around with some parts of the environment, like rotating certain objects or moving light-sources. The demo was later also presented at Nvision 08, in a somewhat updated state. The interactive part initially only lets the user to explore the first fifth of the demo, and the user has to perform various actions with the

to unlock the next part, such as shaking the controller or holding it in a certain angle. The scenes also feature hidden greetings to a number of known demogroups, which can be found in more obscure areas of the demo. Unlocking parts of the demo ("sigils") as well as finding hidden greetings both reward the user with

trophies A trophy is a tangible, decorative item used to remind of a specific achievement, serving as recognition or evidence of merit. Trophies are most commonly awarded for sporting events, ranging from youth sports to professional level athletics. Add ...

. The demo also features an

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, unlockable in the menu by pressing down both analog sticks (L3 and R3) on the Sixaxis. The resulting menu item allows the viewer to watch an "oldskool demo" with a starfield, two DYCP scrollers (using the Amiga character set) and various other early demo effects such as blitter objects and metaballs (intentionally made to look low resolution), with

chiptune Chiptune, also called 8-bit music (although not all chiptune is 8-bit music), is a style of electronic music made using the programmable sound generator (PSG) sound chips or synthesizers in vintage arcade machines, computers and video gam ...

music accompanying it.

Reception

Critical reactions to the project were polarized between two opinions: while some commended the unusual presentation and how the idea of interactive realtime art available on PSN is very much "outside the box", others claimed that the price was too expensive for a seven-minute experience, and that the controls were fiddly and not integral to the experience. Game Chronicles called the visuals "stunning" and stated that it's "easily the best $3 you can spend in the PlayStation Store", giving it 96%. Gamestyle on the other hand, while commending that the demo is "breaking new ground", called it "overpriced", while Digital Chumps found "the controls frustrating and the entire experience extremely short and jarring".

Notes

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

Plastic's homepage

Official details page

Linger in Shadows Soundtrack Composer - Wojciech Golczewski's homepage
2008 video games Demos PlayStation 3 games PlayStation 3-only games PlayStation Network games Santa Monica Studio games Single-player video games Sony Interactive Entertainment games Video games developed in Poland

Gameplay

Reception

See also

Notes

References

External links