Journey (2012 video game)

Journey is an indie adventure game co-developed by Thatgamecompany and Santa Monica Studio, published by Sony Computer Entertainment, and directed by Jenova Chen. It was released for the PlayStation 3 via PlayStation Network in March 2012 and ported to PlayStation 4 in July 2015. In the game, the player controls a robed figure in a vast desert, traveling towards a mountain in the distance. Other players on the same journey can be discovered, and two players can meet and assist each other, but they cannot communicate via speech or text. It has been listed as one of the greatest video games of all time by some critics.

About Journey (2012 video game) in brief

Summary Journey (2012 video game)Journey is an indie adventure game co-developed by Thatgamecompany and Santa Monica Studio, published by Sony Computer Entertainment, and directed by Jenova Chen. It was released for the PlayStation 3 via PlayStation Network in March 2012 and ported to PlayStation 4 in July 2015. In Journey, the player controls a robed figure in a vast desert, traveling towards a mountain in the distance. Other players on the same journey can be discovered, and two players can meet and assist each other, but they cannot communicate via speech or text. Reviewers of the game praised the visual and auditory art as well as the sense of companionship created by playing with a stranger, calling it a moving and emotional experience. Journey won several \”game of the year\” awards and received several other awards and nominations, including a Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media nomination for the 2013 Grammy Awards. The entire game takes about two to three hours to complete and is a wordless story told through gameplay and visual-only cutscenes. The player’s character begins near a small sand dune near a large mountain with a glowing crevice in the far distance. As the character approaches the mountain, they can see a mysterious character that splits into two, with a mysterious peak at its peak. In later levels, they also encounter hostile creatures made of stone, which upon spotting the player rip off parts of the figure’s scarf. In each level, they may come across one other player temporarily connected to their game. They cannot communicate with each other beyond patterns of singing.

When two players finish a section at the same time they remain into one; otherwise, they are connected to each other when they move on to the next one. The music, composed by Austin Wintory, dynamically responds to the player’s actions, building a single theme to represent the game’s emotional arc throughout the story. It is not necessary for the game to be played in order for it to be considered a top-notch game. The game was released in August 2012 and was later ported to Microsoft Windows in June 2019 and iOS in August 2019. It has been listed as one of the greatest video games of all time by some critics. The only form of communication between the two is a musical chime, which transforms dull pieces of cloth found throughout the levels into vibrant red, affecting the game world and allowing the player to progress through the levels. Larger strips of cloth are present in the levels and can be transformed from a stiff, dull gray to vibrant red by singing near them. Doing so may have effects on the world such as releasing bits of cloth, forming bridges, or levitating the player. This, in turn, allows the players to progress in the level by opening doors or allowing them to reach previously inaccessible areas. In the game, the figure wears a trailing magical scarf which allows them to briefly fly; doing so uses up the scarf’s magical charge, represented visually by glowing runes on the scarf. The scarf’s runes are recharged by being near floating pieces of red cloth, or a variety of other means.