The Shadow of the Czar
let abstract = "Shadow is an action-packed, jazz-infused narrative web game in film noir style, produced in partnership with World Labs, the AI research group co-founded by Ben Mildenhall, Dr. Fei-Fei Li and more. Designed to push both my storytelling and World Labs’ incredible technology to the limits, I made it solo in six weeks: concept, screenplay, environments, audio, VFX, game design and engineering, using World Labs’ Marble and SparkJS, a three.js-based gaussian renderer.
In addition to developing the game with cutting edge rendering and AI generation technology, I loved how much physical tech and real-world action was involved. Lighting, cinematography, performance, costuming, prop-making, 3D scanning, stunts and voiceover accents – it was the most movie-like of any game production I’ve worked on, and that was enabled by the increasingly photorealistic environments produced by Marble.
Play via your desktop or mobile browser at https://theshadowoftheczar.com, check out the trailer below, or read the case study on World Labs’ site.
This project was an Honoree in the Independent Creator category at the 2026 Webby Awards and was published in the Spatial Storytelling track at SIGGRAPH 2026.
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