From the developer: “The name ‘sonder’ is a word coined by John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows tumblr, and it describes the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. In our game, each NPC is as complex a character as the selected player. Don’t believe us? Then play as him.”

In Sonder, players aren’t simply fed a story. KAMAi MEDIA provides characters, a setting and an interesting situation. It’s up to the player to determine what happens in that situation.

Sonder takes place on a space station that has an industrial, mass-produced look to it, drawing inspiration from retro sci-fi movies such as Alien. The game will offer both single-player and multi-player modes.

There is no futuristic or outlandish technology in the game. Instead, the developers are crafting the environment as they imagine real engineers would. This should make Sonder seem both feasible and believable.

All choices made by the player will influence the game’s outcome, but something new has been added. Again, let me quote KAMAi MEDIA:

“Because each choice the player makes (including which space he occupies at what time) influences the outcome of the game, some people will find choice paralyzing. Was this the best possible thing I could have done? What if I ‘choose myself into a corner?’ To address this, the game offers a ‘rewind-anytime’ mechanic that allows the player to pause the game at any point, rewind to any previous point in time (all the way to the beginning, if necessary), resume playing from that point and attempt to choose something different.

“But ultimately – there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ choices, there isn’t a ‘best’ choice. The game continues under all circumstances, and the player is the only authority that decides whether where he ends up is good or bad.”

All of this sounds quite intriguing to me.

And now, let’s have a look at a Development Diary and Teaser …

At this point, I only have one question. How did KAMAi MEDIA manage to obtain licenses to use Who Are You? by The Who (which is now stuck in my head) and Games People Play by The Alan Parsons Project? That must have taken some maneuvering, or maybe they just…er…know the right people? Well, however they did it, I like it.

In any event, Sonder is currently in pre-Alpha status and doesn’t yet have a publisher. The plan is to release the game on PC/Windows and “next-gen” consoles.