Scent
Alan Kwan
Scent is a short cinematic video game in which you play as a dog wandering a war-torn city, collecting the souls of the dead. As you walk, run, and hide amid unfolding atrocities, the game immerses you in a raw, sensory experience of fear, darkness, and fleeting moments of hope. Stripped of specific historical or geographic markers, Scent explores what it means to witness without power.
Photo Gallery
Alan Kwan
Creator
Working at the intersection of cinema and video games, Alan Kwan creates experimental games, VR installations, and live game performances that evoke heartbreak, fear, and the sublime. While most mainstream video games empower players by giving them superhuman abilities and a steady stream of rewards, in Kwan’s games, the protagonists are fragile, and players have limited control over their fate.
He has received an Honorary Mention Award at Prix Ars Electronica, and his projects have been exhibited at the Tribeca Festival, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Forum des images, NewImages Festival, Science Gallery Dublin, SXSW Sydney, Nam June Paik Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, among others.
Kwan earned his master’s degree from MIT and is currently based in Chicago, where he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
