Presented at Videocittà 2025, Heliopolis is the video game installation created by the students of CG Animation and Sound Design at IED Roma, under the guidance of artist and lecturer Lorenzo Raffi.
Heliopolis
Didactical Project - IED Roma - Undergraduate Courses in CG Animation and Sound Design
Academic year
2024/2025
An interactive video game that transforms the city into a temple of knowledge. Heliopolis was conceived as an exploration between philosophy and digital languages: inspired by Tommaso Campanella’s City of the Sun, the work unfolds in a visual universe suspended between the expressionist cinema of Metropolis and the contemporary visions of laser art.
In the game, the audience takes on the role of a “Reborn,” tasked with awakening a dormant android. To succeed, they must collect the Solar Fragments in a 60-second race against time through projections, neon lights, and celestial codes.
Developed by the students of CG Animation and Sound Design together with Lorenzo Raffi, the project was included in the official program of Videocittà 2025 il Festival della Visione e della Cultura Digitale, where it achieved remarkable success: over 8,000 plays by around 900 people, testifying to the immersive power and visionary appeal of a work that merges retrogaming, cyberpunk aesthetics, and existential reflection.
Project from the courses of
