Alongside

A quiet place with no ending.
Your family keeps swimming.

Experiments by Richard Stelmach

FIELD NOTES · NORTHERN SCOTLAND

What does it mean to stay alongside?

Alongside is a quiet experiment about the security of moving with family. There is no score, prey to collect or destination to reach. You can settle into the pod’s rhythm, leave it for open water, or call across the distance and find one another again.

Orcas live in enduring, matrilineal family groups. Young animals learn routes, hunting traditions and distinctive calls from older relatives; pods often travel, rest and surface together. This fictional family borrows that sense of coordination and dependence without claiming to reproduce a particular real pod or dialect.

The setting is an imagined stretch of northern Scottish water. The coast has no final edge: shelves, deep channels, kelp, weather and daylight unfold gradually as the family travels. Breathing brings the animals back to the surface, while the sound and light become more enclosed with depth.

The hand-drawn treatment keeps the experience close to the original sketch. Calls and sea ambience are synthesised for the game. No wildlife recordings are used.

Controls

Drag or use arrow keys / WASD. Release to glide. Hold Shift or toggle Power for stronger strokes. C calls. F or Join them settles beside the family. Escape pauses. There is no ending.

Concept, original drawing and direction: Richard Stelmach. An evolving web experiment.