In Sunlight you take a wonderful, soothing hike through an unknown forest, full of whispering trees with ethereal voices, telling you a philosophical story about life.

An original game developed during the Covid pandemic, with the creative means available while working remotely and a soundtrack from Tchaikovsky sung by the award-winning choir Kammerkoret Aurum.

A great Krillbite's project is to plant a new tree for every download of the game. You can check the project progresses on their Ecologi page

Graphics is surely one of the core characteristics of this game: handpainted in VR with Quill, a 3D-painting software for Oculus, the forest setting resembles a real and live oil painting.

All the setting is a wonderful whirlpool of spots of colors, where all the elements flow into and merge one another. It's not always clear if you're looking at a bush or a grass area.

Krillbite's site says the inspiration came from "expressionist" painters like Monet and Munch, but Monet was one of the most important -considered one of the founders- of the Impressionist movement. Munch, on the other side, is an expressionist but, honestly, I don't see so many expressionist elements in the art.

The forest is ..a forest (a natural environment, very impressionist), sunny and summer-y, the colors are bright and often saturated, they meet the "pleasure of the eye" and transmit the "beauty of life".

It's true that the hues aren't all pure (without black) and there are darker colors and effects of light and shade, but it's also true that this is a 3D game and together with the painting-like effect Krillbite wanted also a three-dimensional sense of the space. Hard to achieve without something communicating the concept of "shadows" and different brightness.

The general feeling is to be inside one of Renoir's or Monet's paintings.

I'd say that the expressionist elements are all in the narration, an experience "from within" and philosophical, going around existential problems, moods and ideas, sensations and the sense of future.

Sunlight has no real mechanics. It's a walking simulator in the very strict sense of the word but, my! to me it's so daintily beautiful!

"Welcome. Are you sitting comfortably? Are you focused, and not thinking about whatever's bothering you these days? I'm not here to test you, please relax."

It's the beginning of your adventure, an introduction that gently tickles your ears while your eyes follows a sprout growing and transforming into a tree.

So relieving. So perfect for Relaxing Gameplaid!

From there you will listen to a story.

This story is told to you in fragments, during which you can roam around freely and explore the beautiful forest and the clearings within it, basking in a wonderful golden and warm light.

When the fragment of the story ends, the forest and the general atmosphere will darken and many "bubbles" of soft light will pop up all round on the terrain, each one with a flower.

You must go around and choose one of them and gather it.

This is the general gameplay and this formula will repeat for the whole story. Each flower you gather will contribute to create a bouquet you will use at the end of the game.

You can choose whatever flower you want, they're of different shapes and colors. You can create a bouquet made of all identical flowers or flowers with the same color or all different ones.

There is no limit in time for you to make your choice, so you're free to roam and keep your anxiety and undesirable thoughts banished from your mind.

I strongly suggest you to follow these suggestions: put headphones on your head, and simply relax, leaving the narrating voice to guide you through the whole story. Taste every moment and don't think it's a game and that it will end.

There is much more to say but I don't want to spoil all the gameplay!

The only accompaniment of the entire narration is "Hymn of the Cherubim" by Tchaikovsky.

It's one of Tchaikovsky's most famous works and an outstanding masterpiece of classical music, part of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.

The Hymn of the Cherubim is also called Cherubikon, sung at the Great Entrance of the Byzantine liturgy.

Despite being a religious piece, in my opinion it fits perfectly the atmosphere and the core focus of the game and I find the game version less..solemn? in some way. To my ears the choir sounds more ethereal than solemn, I believe the voices are more on the same level, less strong and more suffused (can it be used for sounds as it can be for light?!), suiting better the "enchanted" forest environment.

Sunlight is a marvelous 3D audio and visual experience that brings you to the edge between reality and fantasy. Listening to all the tree voices is both beautiful and eerie, sometimes to the point of being overwhelmed by the sheer number of "individuals", accents and dialects you can hear passing by, as well the nearness or the distance of the single voice(s).

It's strange and awesome at the same time and despite the gameplay is very basic and simple, it doesn't disappoint you as long as you take the game in itself as a relaxing sort of audiobook rather than literal "videogame".

Let's say you must take it as a sort of guided meditation session and let the narration flow.