Willy Chyr is turning MC Escher's Relativity into a video game.

MC Escher's work has been referenced and remixed countless times in popular culture, from The Simpsons to The Matrix, including other Escherian video games like Monument Valley. How do you respond to these other Escher remixes in Relativity?

One work that has had a big influence on Relativity is Inception, specifically the scene where Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Ariadne (Ellen Page) are walking through Paris in the dream world, and Cobb is teaching her how to manipulate dreams. Ariadne then asks “What happens when you start messing with the physics of it?” and proceeds to fold the city in half. A little later, you see Cobb and Ariadne walk up a street that’s 90 degrees to their original plane.

When I saw this scene for the first time, I immediately had a ton of questions. What if you took an object from the world on the ceiling? If you let go, would it fall back towards the ceiling because that’s where its respective gravity is pointed? And if so, could you place an object from your gravity on top of that ceiling object, and have them balance in midair? I was imagining all these crazy possibilities. Unfortunately, Inception didn’t really dive into that apsect of that world. But that’s where Relativity comes in. I want to put players in the world shown in that scene, and let them play with objects from different gravities, and see what happens.

More about the game at its website. Speaking of gravity, if I knew how I'd insert Matthew McConaughey into the animated GIF above.

The interview with Chyr concludes with asking him what he has planned after he finishes the game.

I’m thinking of going to culinary school.