There are some places in Second Life where you arrive and immediately understand what you’re looking at. You see a pretty beach, a cute little café, a beautifully decorated house or perhaps an enormous shopping event and your brain goes, yes, I know what this is.
Then there are the places where you land, look around, slowly turn your camera in a few directions and eventually conclude that you have absolutely no idea what you’re looking at, but you’re rather enjoying yourself anyway.
Planet M’s Sinder belongs firmly in the second category.
According to the land description, this is a world in grey, orange and blue, a place that exists only in the minds of dreamers and won’t remain around for very long because eventually the odd dreamer will wake up, fall asleep again and dream something completely different. It is dreamlogic at its best, apparently, and while I have no idea what the dreamer was dreaming about when they created this place, I suspect they had been staring at the colour orange for quite a while.
Because the first thing you notice when arriving at Planet M’Sinder is that it is dark.
Not pleasantly dim, not “let’s make this a little atmospheric for the photographers” dark, but a wonderfully dramatic combination of black and charcoal, with towering shapes rising out of the landscape and a giant orange moon hanging in the sky. The ground, rocks and mysterious geological formations, or trees, or alien structures, or possibly the remains of something that really shouldn’t have been left lying around, are all wonderfully dark, while almost everything else seems to have been dipped in glowing orange paint.
The contrast is actually rather spectacular. Against all that charcoal and deep blue, the orange elements practically glow at you, from the enormous moon to the strange floating orbs scattered throughout the landscape. There are orange fires, orange wildlife and various other things that I am sure have perfectly sensible explanations if you happen to be the person who built the place, although as a visitor I decided fairly early on that trying to identify everything would probably interfere with the whole mysterious alien dream thing.
This is one of those Second Life destinations where you are better off accepting what you see rather than demanding answers.
I mean, there is a giant orange frog. At some point you just have to stop asking questions.
🌙 A World Made for Dreamers
The whole place has that slightly surreal quality that makes you feel as though you’ve walked into somebody else’s dream halfway through, and because you have no idea what happened before you arrived, you simply have to make up your own explanation.
Perhaps this is a planet somewhere at the very edge of the universe. Perhaps I’ve been stranded here after a teleporting accident. Perhaps I was abducted by aliens and this is the part where they have left me to fend for myself while they go off for coffee. Frankly, all three explanations seem equally plausible in Second Life.
There is plenty to explore, too, which makes the place feel much larger than you might initially expect. You can wander between the towering dark formations, follow paths and discover little areas tucked away in the landscape, with wildlife appearing here and there and strange glowing objects providing little flashes of colour in an otherwise almost monochromatic world.
And then, because apparently the universe has decided that I am no longer allowed to visit a perfectly peaceful destination without encountering prehistoric wildlife, I spotted another dinosaur.
Yes. Another one.
Regular readers may remember that my previous adventure involved dinosaurs, and I am beginning to find this development slightly suspicious. I don’t know what I have done to the dinosaur community, but apparently I have now been placed on some sort of prehistoric watchlist. This time the culprit was a raptor, lurking in the landscape and looking considerably more like something that would happily eat me than something that would appreciate a polite introduction.
The good news was that he was green, which made him surprisingly easy to spot against all the black and orange scenery. The bad news was that he was still a raptor.
🔥 Orange Things, Strange Creatures
There is plenty of wildlife around Planet M’s Sinder, and the colour scheme makes all of it look even stranger. Horses wander around the landscape, there is a rather lovely frog, and various other creatures and details help make the place feel alive.
The effect is particularly nice when you stop and look at the surroundings as a whole. Those enormous dark formations tower above you while the orange elements catch the light, and in the distance the mountains fade into the blue darkness. It feels alien without becoming completely incomprehensible, and there is enough going on to make you curious about what might be around the next corner.
Of course, curiosity is precisely what gets people into trouble in these sorts of places.
I discovered one of the more secluded areas and, because I apparently have absolutely no survival instincts whatsoever, wandered over to investigate. There was some sort of gathering taking place involving animals, and although I am still not entirely sure what I was witnessing, it looked suspiciously like some kind of ritual.
Now, normally I am perfectly happy to investigate strange things in Second Life. That’s practically the point of exploring. But there is a very specific moment when you realise that you’ve wandered into something you probably weren’t invited to, and this was one of those moments.
So instead of doing the sensible Second Life thing (which would have been to walk directly into the middle of it, take fifty photographs and possibly ask someone what was going on) I quietly backed away.
There are some mysteries that don’t need solving.
🍸 Even Alien Planets Need a Bar
Of course, no civilisation or vague alien planet is complete without somewhere to have a drink, and Planet M’s Sinder has a club and bar/club area among all the other strange things waiting to be discovered.
I have to say, I rather like the idea of ending up stranded on a completely unfamiliar planet and finding a bar almost immediately. It suggests that whoever designed this place understands priorities. You might not know where you are, what the strange orange things floating around you are, or whether the local wildlife considers you a potential food source, but at least you can sit down and have a drink.
🎧 Don’t Forget the Sound
The creators recommend using the shared environment and playing the music stream for the full experience, and I would definitely suggest doing that rather than visiting with your usual settings and sound turned off.
The atmosphere is a big part of Planet M’s Sinder. The lighting, landscape and soundscape all work together to create that feeling of being somewhere just slightly outside reality, which is exactly what the description promises.
Without the sound, you’re visiting an unusual and very photogenic Second Life region. With the environment and music playing, it becomes much easier to slip into the illusion that you’ve actually arrived somewhere else.
And perhaps that’s the real charm of places like this.
Second Life has always been very good at allowing us to step through a screen and temporarily become someone else, somewhere else. One minute you’re sitting at your computer in your perfectly ordinary real-life surroundings, and the next you’re standing underneath an enormous orange moon on a planet that shouldn’t exist, surrounded by strange wildlife, glowing orbs and geological formations that seem to have escaped from somebody’s subconscious.
You can even pretend you’ve been stranded there, which I think would make for some excellent roleplay.
Although if I were genuinely stranded on Planet M’s Sinder, I would probably be less concerned about finding civilisation and more concerned about locating that bar before the raptor finds me.
📸 A Photographer’s Dream, Obviously
For photography, Planet M’s Sinder is absolutely gorgeous. The dramatic lighting and unusual colour palette give you a lot to work with, and the dark landscape makes those orange elements stand out beautifully. The giant moon alone is practically begging to appear in somebody’s profile picture, while the strange rock formations create plenty of opportunities for more atmospheric shots.
It is also the sort of destination where you can keep finding different compositions simply by moving a few metes and changing your camera angle. Something that looked mysterious and slightly threatening from one direction can suddenly become almost beautiful from another, which is one of the things I enjoy most about exploring these surreal builds.
🌌 Until the Dreamer Wakes
Planet M’s Sinder feels like exactly what its description promises: a strange little world that exists somewhere between reality and imagination, where the usual rules don’t necessarily apply and where you’re encouraged to simply wander around and see what you find.
It is dark and dramatic, wonderfully surreal and surprisingly peaceful in places, despite the occasional threat of being eaten by something that went extinct millions of years ago.
But don’t try too hard to understand it. Turn on the shared environment, play the music, take your time and let yourself get lost in it for a while. Because eventually, according to the land description, the dreamer will wake up and Planet M’s Sinder will disappear, replaced by whatever strange thing their subconscious decides to dream up next.
Until then, there is an orange moon overhead, mysterious creatures wandering around, a strange ritualistic gathering I wisely chose not to investigate, a bar for when things get too weird, and at least one green raptor apparently keeping tabs on me.
So yes, I enjoyed my visit.
