1. FMP: Critical Reflection
1.1 Final Outcome
Description
Spectacle is an experimental art game, it was designed to emphasise subjectivity against Spectacle; In moving from the physics-free perspective to the third person, the player will dissolve the Spectacle itself by collect the related symbols and find a way of acquiring a new form of individual, gaining the power of the symbols to look into the eyes of his/her off-screen self in the end.
1.2 Game Flow
L1 EYEBALL VILLAGE
THIS VILLAGE FULL OF STRANGE CREATURES AND BUILDINGS WITH THE SYMBOL OF EYES. Player need to collect all eyeballs to generate a physical substitute. This scene is designed to be the exist form of Spectacle.
L2 MICROBIAL POND
The player gains an entity after collecting the eye, becomes an eye and can swim in the pond, just like a single-celled organism (just like a straw worm) in a nutrient solution. Here, the player encounters many other beautiful cells. This scene is designed as an experimental pool of the elements that make up the Spectacle.
LEVEL 3 EYE TO EYE
Players need to find ways to combine elements to form a witch’s face and fit her with eyes. Ultimately, the player will look into the eyes of herself. I tried to complete the dissolution of the spectacle with this ending.
1.3 Aethestics
1.4 Critical Reflection
Connection with final essay
In my thesis “The perfect spiritual model? – How can we design experiences into meaningful In my thesis “The perfect spiritual model? – How can we design experiences into meaningful game contents”, I divided real experiences into different subjects, studied a universal approach to transforming real experiences into meaningful game contents and derived a framework for experience design based on case studies of “Sayonara, Wild Heart” and “Stray”. This framework was then applied to the production of my FMP：
This process can be broadly divided into：
- Find the essence of the experience
- Divide key elements from the experience
In my attempts to use the framework as a starting point for experiential game design, I have followed the steps involved in the framework, such as defining the subject type and the goal of the experience in the first step. However, while this framework can also be helpful in scope, it is better used for testing existing games. For example, in the first version of my proposal for experiencing the sensation of ‘distraction,’ I tried to break down the feeling of being distracted into the steps of the game and wrote the initial experience of the game accordingly:
| GAME FLOW | DETAILS | GAMEPLAY | VERBS | SCENE |
Start game interface menu | Replicas of countless everyday objects in a floating state | null | A | |
level selection interface menu | The camera pans down and reveals that the source of these images is the protagonist’s brain. Three of the images are icons for level selection | null | B | |
The protagonist gets up and prepares to start the day, but finds it impossible to concentrate | Eyes, nose, mouth floating animation | 1-1 | ||
He stared at a rabbit decoration on the table, and suddenly the rabbit moved and jumped around on the table | mouse up | mouse up | 1-2 | |
He tries to eliminate this rabbit by clicking on it, trying to get rid of it | mouse click | mouse click | 1-3 | |
Rabbits begin to breed infinitely, the screen is full of rabbits | ani | 2-1 | ||
When he eliminated all the rabbits on the screen, the screen appeared a rabbit hole | mouse click | 2-2 | ||
Click on the rabbit hole to enter a light and fantasy world (attention zoo or playground, consisting of alienated everyday objects) | mouse click | 3-1 |
In this design process, I did not spontaneously follow this framework, but came after writing part of it to check whether this was a human or non-human experience, what the goal of this experience was and whether it would give the player the same feeling. This is not to deny the validity of the framework in my thesis, but it has to be acknowledged that this framework is more appropriate as a reference.
In the current project, I want to design an experience with not one but multiple subject transitions, where the game presents the process of no physical object – physical object – no physical object, with a first-person-third-person-first-person camera switch as a sign of the subject transition.
Cooperation
I worked with a student from MA Illustration and Visual Media, who provided me with the 2D artwork, and I designed the game and level art.
- Comversation is quiet flat, not strong enough to hold the narrative.
- Some details remain to be added to fill the world.
2. FMP: Concept and Insprition
2.1 inspiration
The spectacle of a society completely dominated by the mass media, where all tragedies and controversies are treated as a show, and all events, big and small, are turned into entertainment. Because people also desire spectacle, society has begun to focus only on the production of magnificent fireworks.
I want to explore the relationship between attention and spectacle using a medium with diverse methods of interaction.
2.2 aims and objectives
framework
I Created a digital environment of three levels that contains the eye elements, it that way I want to present different angle about Spectacle through the symbol of eyes. After roaming around exploring the village of eyeballs (the already existing form of the spectacle) as a disembodied character and collecting eyeballs (the constituent elements of the spectacle), the player enters the experimental pool, becomes one of the eyeballs and undergoes a baptism in which he/she finally acquires a new form of life, gaining the power of the eyeballs to look into the eyes of his off-screen self. In the game, there are detailed input-output system allow player to interact deeply.
2.3 Brainstorm
I made some brief at the beginning try to identify the best one to express the experience of being human or non-human, and things may happen among them:
1. The beginning is from the father’s point of view, where the game is played for the last time with his son, and the son stays where he is at the end, with the father far away, and finally from the son’s point of view. Each level corresponds to a different moment in the life of a different son, and each level uses the PROCESSING bar for points. There is a UI on both sides of the head showing the two players and the narrative pops up through the UI of the avatar in an isometric style.
2. A man trapped in the crater of a planet begins to hallucinate surrounded by stars, turning the twinkling stars around him into the home of his dreams, and eventually he dies and becomes one of those hallucinations.
3. The man in the sensory zoo is surrounded by countless symbols and sounds, visual information and gets lost, he spells out the map of the zoo and follows the route of each park to turn these variants back into animals and eventually walk out.
2.4 Case study and reference
The night journey
The game begins in the center of a mysterious landscape on which darkness is falling. There is no one path to take, no single goal to achieve, but the player’s actions will reflect on themselves and the world, transforming and changing them both. If they are able, they may slow down time itself and forestall the fall of darkness. If not, there is always another chance; the darkness will bring dreams that enlighten future journeys.
Then I began to think:
What is the game mechanic of enlightenment? How can we model such an intensely personal yet archetypal experience in a game?
MEDITATION GAMES
Meditations is the collection of games that followed from this project. Each project is different – some are very short, some are more complicated. Some meditations are light and curious. Other meditations might be sad or difficult, curious or introspective, personal or playful. Each day will allow you to explore another creators’ work and thoughts.
Look deep into one experience and divide that into small frames, and figure out how to translate into game experiences. Those two inspired me on focus on the interaction. So I want to the detailed input-output system in UNITY.
PANORAMICAL
Manipulate the look, sound, and feel of more than a dozen mesmerizing landscapes in this immersive musical adventure through space and time.
I referenced its use of a physics-free perspective and used it in the first level of the project. In addition to this, I also used his art style to create a similar nostalgia filter using the unity plugin post-processing.
3. Development
overall goal
timeline
why this project among all ideas?
3.1 Technology
Ai: Patrol
Fungus
Based on the reference game, I have broken down the control system into tables, scripted and implemented the different sprites according to the functions required.
| INPUT | DETAILS | OUTPUT | FEEDBACK | Target |
| mouse up | once entered | ScaleUp | dymamic sprites | aesthetic |
| once entered | sprites avoid mouse | dymamic sprites | narrative | |
| mouse click | short click | delete elements | destroy | mechanic |
| short click | the number of elements remain | transform | mechanic | |
| mouse drag | from the scene | the number of elements remain | picture combination | mechanic |
| from the storage | add elements | decoration | narrative aesthetic |
I made a mind map of the programming requirements I needed, categorised them by function and highlighted them in red when they were complete, to keep track of the development process, besides that, I also linked the tutorial for each function for the purpose to rocord the author and form a library.
3.2 Level Design
3.3 Art and sound
In order to present a grotesque and absurd art style, we referenced HÄXAN: WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES.
Kirstenson denied the existence of witches, believing them to be old-time women who were disabled or weak, or mentally ill or sexually repressed nuns who were tortured to the point of confusion and forced to confess to their sins in order to survive, inventing stories of witchcraft to testify against others, including themselves, hence the increasing number of witch hunts.
WITCH HUNTING IS ALSO A PHENOMENON INFLUENCED BY THE SPECTACLE, PEOPLE ARE ATTRACTED TO THINGS THAT ARE DIFFERENT FROM THEMSELVES, AND SOMETIMES THIS GAZE IS NOT BENEVOLENT. In order to present a process of player merges with spectacle, the world meed to be weird enough and different from the normal world.
So after I designed some features of creatures and buildings and some environmental elements, Kai made some draft of some of them.
Then we wanted to hide the face in the scene, so we made an experimental attempt to make a prototype of this image through paper sculpture. Putting together a pop up book of sorts will help me think about the game and how to explore my subject from a different perspective.
Level1
Level2
Level3
Effect
Shader
postprocessing
3.4 Narrative
3.5 playtest
dev log
| DATE | ELEMENTS | DETAILS |
| 8.15 | narrative | reference |
| 10.20 | mechanic | M1：click and destroy |
| 10.27 | mechanic | M2：drag and drop |
| 10.27 | mechanic | M2：drag and drop，failed to active the pop up of “WIN” |
| 11.2 | TA | add the effect of post processing retro on the main camera |
| 11.4 | add load scene buttion | |
| 11.5 | mechanic | M3：endless run just like google |
| 11.9 | 1. Extend multiple mouse button functions to increase interactive feedback 2. Use dotween to achieve more juice feedback 3. Initial level design 4. level selection (scroll effect) | |
| 11.10 | 1. Add more input and outout dynamics to prepare for more diverse interactions (using dotween) Question: How to load next scene not by trigger box collider but through Calculate the number of “coins” collected or processing bar? | |
| 11.11 | 1. added different sound effects to the mouse input and the effect of scaleup 2. intend to use the processing bar to record the completion of the level, wrote three versions of the story and one of the story of the level design So far, the basic game functions have been implemented | |
| 11.12 | detailed level design，listed input and output features |