Static Sky: And Yet It

Static Sky: And Yet It is a literary walking-simulator-style game about fear of and resistance to artificial intelligence. It imagines a future ruled by AI world models, where AI generates everything, reality is redefined, hometowns are reshaped and symbols are reoriented. You explore the protagonist’s world through a series of vignettes and scenarios drawn from his life and generated by the generative AI Sekai. An average playthrough takes 1 to 2 hours.

The protagonist’s reality

The protagonist wears a Real Virtuality (RV) headset that claims to show “reality” within the “virtual.” Traces that seem real through its lenses, such as unfinished noise and uncolored white objects, trigger his fear of reality and mental breakdown. The game depicts his collapse and the disintegration of meaning, presenting a possible future shaped by extreme artificial intelligence. His symptoms are a hypothesis about how people might think in that future.

A world to investigate

You move through a surreal landscape where reality blends with AI hallucinations, in a dystopian world filled with failed AI images. The game asks what a world controlled by rampant generative AI might look like, and presents a mystery about how the world reached its current state.

Art and story

Rhett Tsai brought the surreal world to life, and Mofan Zhai created original oil paintings. Justin Bortnick conceived and co-wrote the story and setting.