Somnata: Where Memories Fall

A city that fell asleep, and everything left behind in it.

Somnata is about a teddy bear nobody came back for.

Below you, an amusement park that never reopened. A carousel that stopped mid-turn, a coaster with its lights out, a great wheel that hasn't moved in a very long time. A small drop of light rises to meet you, and leads you down. You can't stop falling. You were never meant to.

• Everything you touch makes a sound. Drift with the mouse and send out ripples of light. Crystals ring, rings answer, the old rides wake up. The score was written for this fall, and what you play is added to it — never taken away.
  
• The song finishes without you. Miss every single note and the piece still resolves. There's no score to chase, no game over, no difficulty setting — and no timing to hit. What your hand changes is the arrangement, not the outcome.
  
• Light is the reward. Color returns to whatever you brush past, prisms throw rainbows across the dark, and motes of light hang and blur in the depth of field. "Touch it and it starts to glow" is the only grammar this world has.
  
• The great wheel at the bottom. Every fall ends at one enormous thing waiting to be lit. Light it, and for a moment the park remembers what it was for.
  
• One thing is hidden. Something small and forgotten is tucked away in the dark. Find it and it joins your collection. Miss it and nothing is taken from you — it's just a reason to come back down.
  
• One fall is about four and a half minutes. A whole song, heard top to bottom in a single descent. Come back down to fill the collection and hear a different arrangement.
  
• One mouse. Almost no words. Move, and click. That's the whole interface. No tutorial wall, no text to read.

When the lights go out, the results screen says almost nothing. Only that the city still remembers the song.

Note: this game contains flashing and pulsing light effects.