Play in the world of Giorgio de Chirico with SURREALISTa

It's a tribute to the painter and sculptor Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), in which you virtually and literally enter a mysterious and disorienting universe, in the image of his work. The game could be an excellent gateway to discover the artist's creations and his enigmatic compositions set in environments borrowed from antiquity and which seem to represent dreams.

A change of scenery

Playing through the game allows you to find yourself in the artist's pictorial representations, transposed into volumes, as well as to observe the works exhibited by this outstanding 20th-century artist. The player moves from one level to the next, navigating from room to room in an open-air building, admiring reproductions of the paintings on the walls of the virtual rooms and sculptures on pedestals. Potted plants and palm trees, spheres and floating doors; we're both inside, in an ochre-toned museum-building, and outside, in golden light, under a starry or orange sky.

Stockhausen 's music adds to the spellbinding atmosphere, where, at the start, the surfer must explore and then pass over black and white tiles laid out in the rooms (as in some of the artist's paintings), which trigger knock knock knocking or creaking doors, depending on whether or not the tiles are useful for advancing in the game. You then climb staircases leading to doors opening onto new rooms and new works of art, to move from one to another - or not, it seems. Then you jump from platform to platform, high up, to advance, taking care not to fall. A certain amount of skill is required to progress, and the difficulty level seems to increase as you go along.

We haven't yet finished the game or found its finish line, a mystery which is part of its charm. Some teenagers we know, experienced in online games, were quick to find the logic and operation of the game, and the means to move from one room to another. However, they didn't have the patience to push on to the end (if there is an end...). They found the game strange and the music and sound attractive, and enjoyed the jumping challenges and false trails. SURREALISTa will probably appeal more to slightly older players and adults, for whom the limited action, uncluttered style and nude representations will not be off-putting.

The game's two authors, Carlos Monteiro and Rodrigo Rocha, have skilfully transposed the artist's dreamlike universe into a playful three-dimensional space in which to lose oneself, and to which one will gladly return to further explore De Chirico's creations and plunge into his strange pictorial world.

Resources [consulted July 6, 2015]

SURREALISTa by Gigoia Studios: http://gigoiastudios.itch.io/surrealista

Carlos Monteiro: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCie2JFHVEgw4H7aQfDJKKZg

Rodrigo Rocha: www.rodrigorocha.16mb.com

See also about Giorgio de Chirico:

Filmed interview with Giorgio de Chirico (1971), on Ina.fr: http://www.ina.fr/video/CPC79054216

WikiArt page on Giorgio de Chirico: http://www.wikiart.org/en/giorgio-de-chirico

Giorgio and Isa de Chirico Foundation: http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/

Text for the Giorgio de Chirico exhibition at the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (2009): http://www.mam.paris.fr/fr/expositions/exposition-giorgio-de-chirico