Any views expressed within media held on this service are those of the contributors, should not be taken as approved or endorsed by the University, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University in respect of any particular issue.
The Infant Room was inspired by baby rooms in real life that typically have themes like the ocean, zoo animals. However, since our game is based off the theme of surrealism in all the rooms, I took the baby room a bit further in my initial design.
The baby room shown below was by inspiration, and I wanted to create a kind of gentle nighttime atmosphere suitable for a baby trying to sleep.
Room Design
I really liked how the baby room in the inspiration picture had clouds hovering over the bed, so I placed them over the bed and surrounding the room with the three toys in different places in the room. I used a nighttime image in the sky box to convey they kind of atmosphere I wanted this room to have. All baby toys were created using real baby toys for reference.
Gameplay
In this room, players have to find all the objects in the room and put it into the large blue toy box. Players would also have to navigate the room but bouncing on the glowing spheres all across the room in the search for all the baby toys.
The task in this level is to find the right ladder that will help you reach the top of the bed and retrieve the object that will trigger the character’s memory. The player is in a hazy room, inspired by the game Islands: Non Places, where they must search for the correct size ladder surrounded by ladders all different sizes. This room is meant to help player’s sympathize with the character, since they have alzheimer’s and it’s a disease that affects a person depth perception, distance between objects and sense of judgment. It’s meant to be one of the easier levels in the game, that can help the player figure out what they are meant to do.
Princess Bed
Room Scene.
There a sticky notes on the walls of the room, and on some of the object that will glow in foggy atmosphere. Player has to roam around the room and find the right ladder that will reach the top of the bed that hold the object at the very top.
The sticky notes are in reference to the character and the disease that they have to help build the story telling and learn about the character a bit more. Many people with alzheimers use sticky notes to help assist them with memory loss, and place them all over their homes and rooms to help them be more independent and remember tasks as well as other things.
The atmosphere is pink and foggy, similar to the inspiration images below. The fog will also be in the shade of the hex code below.
If I had more time, I would make more objects that the player could interact with as they roam around the room searching for the right ladder. Interactions like exploring the character objects in the room, reading a journal, or writing on the sticky notes, opening and closing the music box would have really made the scene more interactive.
All the textures and models in this scene are low poly and simplistic in terms of design and textures. It was my intention design for this scene in a minimalistic style to support the atmosphere, and the mood.
You play a character in this game who has Alzheimer’s, who wakes up in their own home and don’t recognize where they are and who they are. They are completely lost, and to them, their home has been transformed into a non-euclidean maze that they now have to work to navigate and find their way again by entering each room, and discovering objects in the space that helps recover their memories of their home and their themselves.
In the last stage the player escapes the maze, bringing all the objects into the final room placing in position so they finally recognize where they are and who they are.
These notes are based on the group meeting on 03/06
How are we presenting our game?
We are playing with the idea that there are multiple people on a journey of discovering their lost memories at the same time.
Our game can become a kind of art installation, where the waiting room, and the room that people are playing can become part of the game experience to make it more immersive for the players.
We would like to have people experience the game in two different ways, where one group of people are participating in the experience as the player in the game, and another group of people are participating as a spectator.
We have also decided to have 4 people playing the game at the same time, in their own space in a cubical or some other such thing but the key is the players are in their own enclosed space.
How are we making this immersive?
We would like to include a projection of visuals in the room, along with sounds that can correspond with them on a speaker. Some ambient music would also be a great addition to have.
We can either project the the gameplay from one person into the room where other people can watch as spectators, or it can be a warped version of the game to project a different perspective of the game for a bit of a interesting twist.
The goal is to help the physical setting of the game become part of the play experience to make it more immersive. So, there can be one speaker and a projection with visuals that can match the color aesthetics of each room the player enters in, with the sounds and music in the background that’s heard in the room that matches the gameplay of the player.
In the enclosed space the players are in, we can also put LED lights in each space that would light up with same colors seen in the room that player enters in the game. We can also include some floor cams that would do the same thing.
Some things to consider…
How can we make sure the audio matches the projection?
How can we make the experience more convincing for the players but also the spectators?
Should we have people watch the gameplay play while in the waiting room, or should we just have a projection showing some game controls and hints? Or will there be some abstract visuals with fun textures and colors with some sound and music that could build anticipation as well as interest?
How are the spectators viewing the game? Are they peering over the players shoulders or are they walking around the room and experiencing the game as a kind of art installation with warped images of the game or just fun seeing visuals and textures?
What do we need to make this all happen?
We need to take the time to find the best room to do this in. The Atrium is the best contender at the moment, where it has the most space that we could easily manipulate for our needs.
We thought about Room 101, but to make the game more immersive it would be a bit tricker to try and figure out how to use the room to our advantage.
So far we need: One speaker, a projector, 4 really good laptops, and 4 really good headphones.
These notes are based upon the meeting we had on 06/3/23 and are the conculsions we have come up with so far. More information about the phenakistoscope is in Ruxin’s Room Concept here.
The Narrative
This game is about discovering lost memories, through remembering old feelings and experiences in a surreal way that’s shown in each room the character enters. The player’s goal is to discover their lost memories by finding objects in each room and escaping the maze to reveal their lost memories.
At the end of the game, when the player escapes the maze with all the objects retrieved from the game, the player enters the last room where they place all the objects they collected onto an ancient toy called the phenakistoscope. The objects spin together on the phenakistoscope and creates an image of a person growing up in all the different stages of life.
The Gameplay
The game begins in an introductory mode, where the player finds the room and the object it contains very easily in order to teach them how to the play the game.
After this tutorial, the game proceeds but this time some rooms may be harder than others. When the player finds the object, it also acts a a key to that lets them leave that room and continue further along in the maze.
The objective is the same in reach room, (find the object) but each room looks different from the other and symbolizes one of the different stages of life based on the theory on psychological development of human beings by Erik H Erikson.
Infancy, Trust vs. Mistrust
Toddlerhood, Autonomy vs. Shame/Doubt
Early Childhood, Initiative vs. Guilt
Late Childhood, Industry vs. Inferiority
Adolescence, Identity vs. Role Confusion
Early Adulthood, Intimacy vs. Isolation
Middle Adulthood, Generativity vs. Stagnation
Late Adulthood, Ego Integrity vs. Despair
Environment, Music and Sound
The maze is in the shape of a Rubik’s cube, where the character is navigating through a non euclidean space. The player cannot trust what they see since there are false doors, dead ends and other such things. In order to navigate this maze since they can’t trust their eyes, the players will have to use sound in order to find their way out. The sound, however, is not located in the virtual game world, but only in the physical space the player is in.
The music in the game will be used to create a strong sense of narrative, the soundtrack that’s heard in the rooms helps make the connection between the game play and the character and builds out the emotional side to the story.
Since sound is being used to help navigate in the maze, it is a key component of the game. The sound will be heard in the physical environment so we wait till maze prototype is ready to test how the sound will be used to navigate the maze.
The List of Rooms & Build Arrangements
Infancy, Trust vs. Mistrust
(Pending, Alex for now )
Toddlerhood, Autonomy vs. Shame/Doubt
(Pending, Linteng for now)
Early Childhood, Initiative vs. Guilt
– Princess and The pea – Alexandria
Late Childhood, Industry vs. Inferiority
– Sadness – Bohan
Adolescence, Identity vs. Role Confusion
– Yogesh
Early Adulthood, Intimacy vs. Isolation
– Loneliness – Ruxin
Middle Adulthood, Generativity vs. Stagnation
-Nightmare / Dark Mood / Atmosphere – Linteng
Late Adulthood, Ego Integrity vs. Despair
(Pending, Ruxin for now)
Decisions and Next Steps
We still have decisions to make as to what the final room is going to look like but we know what is going to happen in this room.
Ruxin would like to make the scope. Zhaoyi is interested in doing the sound for the animation of the scope.
We also need to decide on what will be seen in the room, after the character places all the objects on the scope, and after the animation scene of the scope.
We also need to decide upon what the objects the player discovers in the room is going to look like.
We are all going to begin creating the models for the rooms, or the drafts of the rooms concepts.
Roger and Bohan will collaborate on the programming. Roger will begin creating the maze prototype.
As for the room environment, we have discussed some potential things we could create to make this experience more immersive. There’s already a spatial audio experience that would be happening inside of the room that guides the gameplay for the player, but as for the physical room itself we may have a few options if we wanted to increase the immersiveness of the experience.
One option is to use a projection to display certain textures, animations or images in the room that would correspond to what the player would be doing in the game but this is dependent on what time allows.
We could do a simple projection that would be controlled on an iPad or computer that we would manually change as we observe the player so the physical room would change as the digital world changes in the game. This is to have a kind of play on the parallel worlds between the physical and the digital since the directional sound happens outside the digital game environment.
In addition, there’s also a possibility for a more complex projection, where whatever texture, animation or image we choose to display would match the size of the wall or door we are choosing to project onto. This option requires a few members of the team to learn projection mapping, so it increases the challenges quite a bit in addition to requiring more time.
At the very least, we could create a low tech version of the experience, by changing the lights directly ourselves and switching between colors at various times to manipulate the atmosphere of the experience. Simply booking a room with dimmer light switches is also a strong possibility, and doesn’t require much of a challenge for any one of us, though it could lessen the immersive quality of the experience.
These are all options that we can decide upon, but we will continue to focus the bulk of our time on designing and programming our game since it is quite complex.
In our game, there are rooms the player enters that is a distorted view of reality that represents a memory or a feeling in each. I’m designing three of those rooms.
The architecture and environments has been inspired by dreamscape architecture and surrealist photography/art.
Room 1 – Peace & Serenity
In this room, the player enters a water environment that’s empty except for the ocean and some architecture. Some potential objects in the room may be a building, furniture, fog, mountain or arched walls to help create some boundaries but also tell a story.
.
Room 2 – Loneliness
In this room, the player will enter a desert like space, with a dark atmosphere that feels almost like nighttime. There will be very few models in this room, one of them potentially being a large spiral staircase that’s tall enough to reach the sky or something more abstract.
.
Room 3 – Childhood Book , The Princess and the Pea
In this room, the player will enter a room where it’s a scene from one of the character’s favorite childhood books, The Princess and The Pea. It’s a fun, cheerful memory that’s in a more warped perspective with a highly pastel and dreamy look.
Ruxin and I have been discussing the possible story and narrative concept for our game. The game takes place in a non euclidean space that is designed as a maze where players must use sound to find their way through and collect clues. Each room the player enters represents some kind of memory or emotion of the playable character.
The story could go that the character in the game has fallen asleep, and as the character we enter the dreams and explore the character’s mind in this altered, dream-like kind of reality that’s in the form of this non euclidean Rubik’s cube maze. In the maze, players discover the character’s memories, and emotions that are represented in a surreal way in each room the player enters. By exploring each space, the players learn about the character’s experiences, growth, and feelings at various stages of life. During gameplay, the player uncovers more pieces of the maze, and more details about the character they are playing, with each room providing various context clues about the maze and character they’re playing.
We are inspired by the game Monument Valley, a surreal puzzle adventure game where the player guides the character through a series of optical illusions and mazes. This game has a dream-like surreal fantasy atmosphere and design with small narrative that appears once you successfully complete each level where the players get to know more about the character Ida at each stage.
Moncage is another game that we have been inspired by, especially since this is a puzzle game that takes place inside of a cube with each side of the cube showing a different scene and it’s own unique world. In this game players are also put into this world where they have to solve puzzles that are full of illusions and clues. This game also has a dream like quality to it, and a small narrative that helps keep the player interested and engaged.
I’ve been doing research on digital art installations, some are completely virtual reality installations, while others are mixed reality and done with projection mapping. I’m also including links and images to refer back to so I can take a look at them for future reference, but also for bookmarking purposes.
Artificial Nature is a digital art installation and series that I’ve been looking at for inspiration pretty frequently. There are several different projects done by Haru Ji, and Graham Wakefield in this series that are incredibly interesting and could be useful to examine in the future. I think my favorite one is Endless Current.
https://artificialnature.net/#tab-home
The HVBRD is an audio-visual installation done by students in the Université du Québec à Montréal where they created an experience where players only goal is to cruise through a barren retro-wave landscape. The students connected a WiiFit board and customized it to move like a skateboard so players can go as fast or as slow as they want to in the experience. I really appreciated the concept behind this experience. It’s not really a video game, there’s no main goal or purpose but the player is in complete control of the experience as they cruise.
I’ve also found a website the contains entire archive of projection mapping installations, inspirations and software that we can use or that I can potentially use in the future for personal projects.
At the start of the meeting we discussed the idea of combing projection mapping with virtual reality, looking over digital installations that were done as museum exhibitions . I was the most inspired by the installation, Inhabitat , a mixed reality artwork that explored alternative ecosystems where people would be able to explore the environment in two different ways. One person could explore while wearing the VR headset and look at microscopic ecosystems up close and personal, while others could manipulate the ecosystem and play with a physical sand sculpture with a projection laid over it that was also in the room.
https://artificialnature.net
.
During the meeting we played with the idea of doing something similar, where we could create a world that could be seen in two different ways, and well as have some interaction with real objects and sensors by using a Vive tracker.
I’m also inspired by this installation done done by Design I/O called Connected Worlds and brought it up during our discuss. This installation was also held in a science museum, where projection mapping was used as well as physical objects. The physical objects were used by the “players” to help manipulate the environment, in addition to motion sensor technology.
After looking at these two projects we discussed how we could incorporate these mechanics into our own designs, as well as some challenges that might occur. Projection mapping in general however, remained a strong contender in terms of what technology we could use for our project.
.
. 
. 
. 
