MBOMBO: DREAM ECHOES, 2024
Mbombo: Dream Echoes is a video game that explores the radical potential of rest and dreaming as forms of resistance. Set in an unfolding, vibrant dreamscape the game raises profound questions about the potentiality of the dreamscape as a collective refuge. What becomes possible when we rest? What do our dreams unravel?
Mbombo attempts to render Black bodies beyond extraction— with play, pleasure and discovery as newly forged tools of liberation. Each experience, each encounter sheds a layer, heals a wound and in so doing reveals wisdom and ways of knowing that were once obscured and repressed in the name of capitalism, colonialism and slavery. The game reaches beyond bloodthirsty battles for glory in favour of idle wandering, playful curiosity and deep connection, abandoning traditional video game conventions of extraction, accumulation, and productivity in exchange for reward. In the tradition of visionary fiction, Sondi offers a way to practice the future; one that reclaims stolen imaginations, normalises slow wanderings, and encourages a probing of our dreamspaces as otherwise sites of possibility.
Installation Setup at W139
GAME CREDITS
SONDI Lead Artist, Creative Director, Character Design, Environment Design, Concept
MARLY PIERRE-LOUIS Research and Narrative Support
PLEUN GREMMEN, EUSEBI JUCGLÀ & SONDI 3D Asset Design
EUSEBI JUCGLÀ Unreal Engine Game Development
ARJUNA VLASBLOOM Sound Design
LUIS LECEA ROMERA Sound Consultant
MIKA SCHALKS Graphic Design
IYO BISSECK Game Consultant
CHLOE BATCHELOR Whispers Voice
EMMA PRINS Additional Voice
NOAH COHEN Installation Setup
A game commission by Het HEM for The Couch with the support of the Creative Industrie Fund NL
