Jonas Kyratzes

Jonas Kyratzes
Jonas Kyratzes interviewed by Matt Barton in 2011
Born	(1984-05-21) 21 May 1984 Wiesbaden, Germany
Residence	Frankfurt, Germany
Nationality	Greek, German
Occupation	Video game designer, writer
Known for	Last Rose in a Desert Garden (2000), The Museum of Broken Memories (2006), The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge (2008)
Partner(s)	Verena Kyratzes
Website	jonas-kyratzes.net

Jonas Kyratzes is a video game designer and the author of video game industry related articles.^[1]

Career

Kyratzes' games are known for breaking with convention and being heavily story-driven.^[2] Several of his games are thematically interconnected, often by the recurring figure of Urizen (first mentioned in The Great Machine) and other themes related to or inspired by the work of William Blake. With his wife, he created The Lands of Dream, a setting for many games,^[3] a book,^[4] and stories (see Stories below) he and his wife created.

He also has an interest in film, and in January 2009 he wrote and directed a short documentary about the 2008 Greek riots called The Greek Riots: Some Basic Facts.^[5]

Jonas was born in Germany to a Greek father and a German mother, and raised in Greece. He has written several articles on video games, often advocating the concept that games are an art form. He is also politically active on the internet, blogging about political issues^[6] and co-founding the Wikileaks Stories game-making initiative.^[7][8][9] He describes his politics as left-wing.^[10]

He lives in Frankfurt, Germany with his wife, Verena.

Games

• Last Rose in a Desert Garden (2000): Fatalistic but very short, which takes place in the aftermath of a nuclear war.
• The Infinite Ocean (2003, 2010 remake), deals with the concept of existentialism, centered on a sentient computer.
• The Great Machine: A Fragment, an experimental work of interactive fiction about the horrors of war.
• The Museum of Broken Memories (2006), which also deals with themes relating to war, but is made up of a number of interrelated story fragments.^[11][12]
• The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge (2009), a humorous fantasy with melancholic undertones, set in the Lands of Dream.^[13][14]
• Phenomenon 32, a post-apocalyptic 2D exploration platformer set in an alternate universe.^[15]
• You Shall Know The Truth, a political game about Wikileaks^[16]
• Alphaland (2011): a platformer set inside an unfinished (alpha) game. Terry Cavanagh is credited as a programmer.^[17][18]
• The Book of Living Magic (2011), another game set in the Lands of Dream, in which a girl named Raven Locks Smith leaves the town of Dull to find The Book of Living Magic.^[19]
• Arcadia: A Pastoral Tale (2012), another work of interactive fiction (a text-based game).^[20]
• The Fabulous Screech (2012), a Lands of Dream installment expanding on the feline character it is named for, whom was first introduced in The Book of Living Magic.^[21]
• Traitor (2012), Kyratzes' most mechanic-based game, a vertical shooter about a mercenary's role in a growing revolutionary conflict.^[22]
• The Sea Will Claim Everything (2012), his first commercial game, involving another Lands of Dream scenario where a biotechnological dwelling called Underhome must face foreclosure.^[23]
• Moonlight (2012), a surreal text-based game that contains Stephen Fry, Oscar Wilde, Alpha Centauri, eagles, and many more things.
• The Matter of the Great Red Dragon (2014), a text-based Lands of Dream game ^[24]
• The Talos Principle (2014), hired as a writer by Croteam
• A Postcard From Afthonia (2014), his latest Lands of Dream game, in which the player helps out a cat and a dog, who are married, during a war.^[25]
• Serious Sam 4 (TBA) ^[26]

Book

• Στη σκιά του Αόρατου Βασιλιά (In the Shadow of the Invisible King), (2013) is currently only available in Greek. It takes place in the Lands of Dream.

Stories

Jonas has "collected" many stories that take place in the Lands of Dream. They are all illustrated by his wife, Verena. The stories are found in The Oneiropolis Compendium,^[27] the Wanderers' Tales^[28] (stories written by other authors that "traveled" to the Lands of Dream), and Likely Facts,^[29] excerpts from The Book of Likely Facts (only published in the Lands of Dream), which was written by "Jorrum Dooga."

The Lands of Dream

Of the Lands of Dream, Jonas Kyratzes said: "There are two stories about what the Lands of Dream mean.

The first story says that they are an interconnected set of stories in a variety of media, including the illustrated short stories of the Oneiropolis Compendium, the upcoming children’s book In the Shadow of the Invisible King and four computer games: The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge, The Book of Living Magic, The Fabulous Screech and The Sea Will Claim Everything. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from William Blake to Lord Dunsany, these stories refuse to accept that silly is the opposite of serious and that politics and philosophy do not belong in art. The Lands of Dream, however, are not a case of “playful postmodernism” (which they despise) or just random surrealism, but a complex setting with clear and definite ideas behind it. They are a literary work, a political work, a personal work; they are infused with democratic ideals, with humanist principles, with an unwavering belief in imagination and art.

The second story says that dreams flutter above the towers of Oneiropolis, the City of Dreams. And though Urizen himself marches on the city, these dreams sometimes leave the city and land in our world, whispering in the ears of poets (in the true sense of the word – those who create), telling them of strange places in distant lands. Then these poets are compelled to write, whether they like it or not, about what they have heard, no matter whether they are taken seriously. And it so happens that a fat, hairy mortal called Jonas Kyratzes, of doubtable body odour and peculiar teeth, who pees and poos and bleeds like every mortal, has been lucky enough to be visited many times by these dreams, and has created with the help of his friends these crooked little stories in the hope of capturing something, even a little, of that world where everything imagined is real, that world we are all forever drawn to.

The latter story is true."^[30]

From the perspective of the Lands of Dream, the chronological order of the games is:

• Ithaka of the Clouds (upcoming)
• The Book of Living Magic
• The Fabulous Screech
• The Matter of the Great Red Dragon
• The Sea Will Claim Everything
• A Postcard From Afthonia
• The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge
• The Council of Crows (upcoming)

The written stories are set throughout the history of the Lands of Dream.

Future Projects

Games

• The Council of Crows, a crowdfunded Lands of Dream game that will be released in 2016 on Steam.^[31]

This game was originally going to be called Ithaka of the Clouds, but Jonas decided to name it The Council of Crows and give his next Lands of Dream text-based game the name "Ithaka of the Clouds."

• Super Omega Land, another platforming game
• Ithaka of the Clouds, a Lands of Dream text-based game

This game was originally crowdfunded, but Jonas decided to rename it The Council of Crows. Ithaka of the Clouds became a very different (and less expensive) game than Jonas had originally planned.

Books

• Looking for publishers for English and German versions of his children's book In the Shadow of the Invisible King (currently only published in Greek).
• Writing a full-length novel for adults

Film

• Planning small film projects to work on after he finishes the games he's working on
• Will be looking for an agent in the future

References

External links

• Official website
• Jonas Kyratzes at MobyGames
• An interview with Kyratzes at Gnome's Lair
• Kyratzes YouTube account
• Lands of Dream official website