On the last day of November, a blog for the Morning Herald in Sydney, Australia offered details on a new video game developed by graduate students in the interactive media division of the USC School of Cinema-Television.

“Cloud” is a dreamy, noncompetitive game that simulates the experience of flying over and under clouds.

The week after the brief blog mention, more than 100,000 people worldwide attempted to download the game, overwhelming the IM division’s server.

Since then, the “CBS Morning News” has featured “Cloud” in a story on the future of video games. The segment comes on the heels of coverage by industry magazines, discussions on gamer blogs worldwide and acceptance to Slamdance, the video-game component of the Sundance Film Festival.

That’s heady attention for a game not yet on the market and developed by students with a bare-bones budget of $20,000 provided by USC. A year ago, the university announced a Game Innovation Research Grant competition and awarded $20,000 to the winning proposal, which was “Clouds.”

An eight-student team, headed by third-year MFA student Jenova Chen of Shanghai, China began work on the game last January. Since most of the team members had summer internships with video-game companies, “Cloud” could not be completed until the students returned in the fall.

The team’s faculty adviser, assistant professor Tracy Fullerton, who has written a text on game design and has presented papers on the topic, said the game is one of the first to blur the lines separating organic and electronic.

Games as an art form are evolving to have a wider range of emotions, she said. “The goal is a real emotional experience, a real dramatic experience.”

Lead designer Chen said “Cloud” is proof that people will respond to games that don’t offer violence or a lot of stimulation. “I’m glad people like the game, and I can see a potential market there,” he said.

Although the logo for the game is the Chinese character for “cloud,” there is little other Chinese culture reflected in the design – a mixture of Japanese anime and Western elements, Chen said, that attempts to capture a feeling of youthfulness and imagination.

Playing “Clouds” is intended as a soothing experience. The restful graphics and New Age piano chords are a stark contrast to the frenetic clamor of most video games.

Instructions are simple, and the gamers create their own play levels after they finish the ones that are part of the game. The plot involves “good” white clouds floating above islands, and “bad” gray pollution clouds over a city. The player washes away the pollution by making the clouds rain.

“The game tells me to slow down, which is unusual,” said Fullerton, as she demonstrated the game at the Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab in the Zemeckis Center, maneuvering the mouse to skywrite, using clouds.

“It’s kind of like playing with mercury,” she said as she attempted to rein in a wayward cloud formation.

Kellee Santiago, one of the team members, is creating an immersive version of the game for her MFA thesis, with motion trackers and a gestural interface that will allow the gamer to, say, flap her arms as she flies on the screen.

Fullerton said that the response to “Cloud” reflects an interest in the game from individuals who are not traditional video-game consumers. The number of downloads has now passed 150,000, and Electronic Arts is acting as the server, to help deal with the number of requests.

“Cloud” is available as a free download at http://www.thatcloudgame.com.