Indie game 'Hazard: The Journey of Life' is now Antichamber

Hazard: The Journey of Life, by Alexander Bruce, is a super-abstract first-person exploration game, whose rules seem to constantly change. For example, a door might not lead to the same place twice, and a wall might be a door depending on how you look at it. And now, even the name has shifted -- to Antichamber, in advance of its commercial release ("when it's done").

Speaking to Joystiq, Bruce explained the motivations behind the midstream re-christening, by way of explaining the evolution of the name and the game. "Hazard' was chosen back when I was first exploring the geometry system," he said, "and the game was all about killing players in an arena combat game, but eventually that idea died off, and I just kept calling anything related to the geometry system 'Hazard' because I was used to it." He began adding "philosophical" themes "about choices and metaphor" in 2009, at which point the "Journey of Life" subtitle came in.

Now, he explained, the game is less about philosophy and more about "non-Euclidean space, non-physical geometry and massively toying with expectations in a meaningful way." Antichamber covers those angles better than Hazard did. "The game speaks for itself, so the name change is really just bringing it up to date with everything else that has changed."