On the anniversary year of The Chinese Room’s BAFTA-winning Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Kris sits down with creative visionary Dan Pinchbeck to talk about this ground-breaking walking sim.

In an interview that covers a multitude of topics - full timecodes below - the two talk about the power of agency in games relating to character development, how the team was forced to include a feature that became their biggest regret, the sheer emotional force of Jessica Curry’s music, and much more.

As you might expect, this interview contains major spoilers for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, with minor spoilers also for Horizon Zero Dawn.

03:19 - Pushing the walking sim genre

14:30 - A butterfly’s life

18:05 - A very complicated spreadsheet

24:29 - Running the whole thing as a TV shoot

33:03 - The 1980s

35:00 - Secular sacred

42:00 - Favourite places

On this episode were Dan Pinchbeck (@danpinchbeck and danpinchbeck.co.uk) and Kris (@DigitalStrider).Links to where you can find us - StayingInPodcast.com