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Where is The City of Metronome?

Posted by John Constantine

Back in 2005, Swedish developer Tarsier came to E3 with a big game they’d been cooking up called The City of Metronome. Metronome, even three years later, remains a visual feast, its faceless characters, early 20th century fashion, and twisting cityscape sitting somewhere between Edward Gorey and Pixar, Ralph Bakshi and Alex Proyas’ Dark City. Tarsier had also created an exciting foundation for play in Metronome; every action was based around sound. A player could control the city’s citizens, alter architecture, and even fight using sounds recorded in the game. And recording wasn’t just a clever twist on item collection either, as the player could create their own noise to record by interacting with the world (breaking glass, having a conversation, etc.) Few games in the past five years have been as conceptually exciting or strange as Metronome. In 2008 though, it’s nowhere to be found.

Sadly, we do (sort of) know where The City of Metronome is. Tarsier announced in April 2007 that they had ceased active development because they couldn’t get publishers to take a chance on the game. In an interview with PSU.com, Bjorn Sunesson of Tarsier said:

The original City of Metronome concept seemed quite risky in the eyes of a publisher. A new team combined with a game that had unproven "weird" ideas for gameplay and took place in an environment unlike any other game. So what we are doing now is basically building the needed track record, combined with re-designing gameplay to a state where it is still innovative and awesome, but not so unusual that publishers marketing people gets all confused and scared.

A shame considering the success publishers like Take-Two have had with offbeat games like Bioshock in the past eighteen months. There is hope for The City of Metronome though. Just last month, Tarsier announced they’re currently developing a new game for Sony’s Playstation Network. Given Sony’s habit of fostering avant garde developers and games through PSN, it’s more than possible we’ll finally get a chance to explore Tarsier’s city.

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Posted Jun 11 2008, 10:00 AM

Filed under: john constantine, bioshock, where is, Playstation, city of metronome, psn, take-two, tarsier

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John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

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