Reception and Aftermath
Cloud won the Best Student Philosophy award for artistic achievement at the Slamdance Guerrilla Games Competition and a Student Showcase award at the Independent Games Festival. It was showcased on Spike TV, G4TV, and CBS Sunday. The game immediately received a great deal of attention when it was released; site traffic overran the server they were hosting the website on, and then crashed those of the school. By February 2006, just over three months after its release, the website had been viewed over one million times and the game downloaded over 300,000 times. By July 2006, it had reached six million visits and 600,000 downloads.
The game received positive reviews from critics. Joel Durham, Jr. of GameSpy claimed that "everything about Cloud is simply jaw-dropping", and cited its music, visuals, and sensation of flying as high points. William Usher of Game Tunnel also praised the visuals and audio; he believed that its graphics created a relaxing atmosphere, and that the "touching musical score" would emotionally move any player. A reviewer for Game Informer said that the game pointed "to a bright future" in which games would inspire a wider range of emotions; however, the writer called Cloud more of an "experience" than a game. Ron White of PC World similarly called it "the most relaxing experience I've ever had that involved a computer". Durham concluded that Cloud "would set your mind free".
Chen and Santiago went on to co-found the video game studio Thatgamecompany. Composer Vincent Diamante and Erik Nelson worked for the company on its second game, Flower. Thatgamecompany has considered remaking Cloud as a commercial video game, but has decided to do so only if the staff cannot conceive any other game ideas.
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