22 March 2015

L'Arc en Ciel Revisited

It's been many months since I wrote about L'Arc en Ciel (read here from last July), the beautiful sim by Asa Vordun, and thanks to Ronin Undercroft I returned yesterday to explore it anew. Now embracing an entirely new design, the sim is even more striking than before — magnificently impressive and varied, with new things to see at every turn, beckoning both adventurers and photographers. (Click on any image to zoom in — these show the sim's default custom windlight setting.)

Asa's extraordinary skill at design is such that the sim contains woodlands, urban grittiness, farmland and more, all somehow merging seamlessly into a whole: here, it seems to make sense that we move from a bucolic pasture scene with horses grazing in a paddock to a string of city row houses with abandoned vehicles littering the associated street. All the while, beautiful shooting stars anoint the sky with long flashes of light. Somehow, L'Arc en Ciel seems far larger than a single sim, perhaps because visitors must walk about (no flying, but you would want to walk anyway), and because of the long geographic arc that one must travel to see the entire region.

The many small buildings on sim are exquisitely decorated, so that interiors (although none are pictured here) are just as splendid as the landscape, and small touches everywhere are delightful — I smiled as I encountered, near the end of the traveled path, a cat standing on two legs, looking up in wonder at the shooting stars. Given Asa's way of working, parts of the sim might have transformed even by the time you read this: "I keep on changing it all the time," she explains, adding that she prefers to keep the sim open even while revisions are underway. If you enjoy your visit, please consider leaving a contribution to help support the sim, and a guestbook awaits along the path.

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