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# SoundSelf creator Robin Arnott talks games as meditation, sensory deprivation, and acid
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/soundself-creator-robin-arnott-talks-games-meditation-sensory-deprivation-and-acid/
- Published: 2014-03-04T19:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2015-11-17T16:28:07.000Z
- Description: SoundSelf is a game like none other: a tantric, psychedelic, Zen-like, trancelike, hypnotic, and hyperreal experience of being one with algorithms, and, yeah, the universe. When I played it, or rather chanted to it, a year ago in San Francisco, I found it a completely engrossing and soothing experie
- Author: Jason Johnson
- Tags: News, deep sea, drugs, Robin Arnott, soundself, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

*SoundSelf* is [a game like none other](http://killscreendaily.com/articles/articles/pitch-dark-horrors-manifest-euphoria-robin-arnott-engineers-unprecedented-emotion-soundself/?ref=killscreen.com): a tantric, psychedelic, Zen-like, trancelike, hypnotic, and hyperreal experience of being one with algorithms, and, yeah, the universe. When I played it, or rather chanted to it, a year ago in San Francisco, I found it a completely engrossing and soothing experience. But the project has come a long way since then. According to a far out interview with its dev Robin Arnott, the shifty, amorphous mandala sim is almost gaining consciousness. Just take that with a grain of salt because in the same interview he talks about being inspired by taking acid in the desert:

> I’d recently had a powerful LSD trip at Burning Man. I was in this structure (reOnion) with complex kaleidoscopic shapes projected on the walls, and a beautiful droning soundtrack. I began chanting, and just as I did that, the structure filled with choral voices. I felt a physical bond with those voices — like I’d caused them, like I was them. I felt the boundary of my self expand to include them, and to include the structure, and to include the festival, expanding outward infinitely. I was everything and everything was me.

You might be familiar with Arnott through his previous project *Deep Sea*, a sound game which involved strapping on a rather horrifying mask and hyperventilating as you’re deprived of vision. [When I talked to Robin many moons ago](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/167735/Experimental%5FDeep%5FSea%5Fterrifies%5Fplayers%5Fwith%5Fsound%5Fblindness.php?ref=killscreen.com) as a freelancer for Gamasutra, after *Deep Sea* but before *SoundSelf*’s conceptualization, he told me something similar: he was working towards inverting the terror of sensory deprivation to turn it into an euphoric experience. And it looks like he’s done it. He says:

> In many ways, SoundSelf has been a working exploration of my relationship with the universe and the nature of mind… There’s this wonderful history of meditation technologies — from the mandala to the group-om to the modern day sense deprivation chamber — external tools for internal exploration. I think SoundSelf is very much a part of that history.

*SoundSelf* is still in alpha, but you can get a jump on the path to videogame enlightenment by reading more from the interview over [at Gamasutra](http://indiegames.com/2014/03/road%5Fto%5Fthe%5Figf%5Frobin%5Farnotts%5F.html?ref=killscreen.com).