Nathan Altice

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Diving Bell

Diving Bell is a small game poem about sinking slowly into strange waters. It's lightly inspired by a passage in B.K. Evenson's book Dead Space: Martyr that describes the protagonist's long descent into the ocean. It's equal parts dreadful and beautiful.

For the technically-inclined, the game was originally prototyped in Stencyl in 2013, ported to JavaScript (Phaser CE) in 2017, then finally wrapped up in April 2021. Most of the audio was improvised to handheld cassette with miniature synthesizers. The more melodic bits were composed with expert synth wizardry in Ableton Live.

Diving Bell is free and playable online via Itch.

  • Year: 2014–21
  • Media: Mixed
  • Hardware: Fostex 4-Track, GE Mini-Compact Cassette Recorder
  • Software: Stencyl, Photoshop, Ableton Live, JavaScript, Phaser CE

Diving Bell screenshots
Three screenshots from the original Stencyl prototype.