Eidolon

Retrieve specimens and file them in an outdated database. 

Made in a desperate rush for SCREAM JAM 2025

Draws on a whole lot of wandering around nature reserves in my city, which frequently enclose, encircle zone that are off limits for some reason, dubious government business, environmental degradation, heavy contamination with no prospect of remediation.

I took a lot of inspiration from Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy and Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, particularly the polluted culverts the hapless intruders in that film have to wade through.

Text extracts in the game are from At Home in the Weather-World, a journal article by Tim Ingold, and The New Spirit, a long prose poem by John Ashbery.

Is this a particularly scary game? Only if the prospect of filing fills you with dread. 

I would at some point like to return to the idea of a database full of haunted duplicate images... after a little break.

Thanks for playing <3