This week, I conceived a premise that might work in an interactive form. In an AR/ motion-sensing game, the player controls the growth of vines by raising their hands. The game's goal is to help a miraculous vine grow. The player's hand gestures are the light source, their hands are raised to help move growth/avoid damage/gain buff, and the vine reaches various ends in a limited amount of time. Vines have HP, and the game ends when it reaches zero. My theme is the interaction between the fantasy world and people (players). The art style is fantasy illustration style and soothing light music as the background sound.
Moving growth: The vine itself is attracted to sunlight, but the sunlight moves or darkens (the scene becomes night), so it needs to be controlled by hand as the primary light source, prioritising sunlight or other ambient light. Open hands speed up growth, and clenched hands slow it down.
Obstacle: Various items hinder the growth or cause the vine to lose health. For example, bats and pests, exposure reduces HP; On both sides of the cliff, falling rocks, the hit will retreat growth progress; Dragons can breathe fire so that the vines continue to lose life; Ghosts, making vines grow out of control; Fog, occlusion, etc.
Buff: various items will appear to aid plant growth or increase health. Such as butterflies, hummingbirds, the vine can restore HP when it touches them ; Speed-up halo, increasing the growth rate when passing through; Fireflies, can disperse the fog; Angels, get invincible for a certain amount of time, etc.
Particular environment/props: Waterdrops/rain continuously restore life and increase growth rate; Snow, which slows growth or freezes; The sun's bounty, coming to the end, increases growth rates, etc. Particular environments and items need to be unlocked with tokens earned after finishing.
In this interactive experience, players get sensory stimulation through body movements by gaining gains/avoiding obstacles; Unlock different skins/scenes and other items after reaching the ending, allowing players to satisfy their desire to collect. The finish image can be shared on social media, allowing players to communicate with each other and talk about how to match different scenes with plants. After getting entertainment, players can also get aesthetic satisfaction. The project itself is a casual and relaxed game. I hope that by creating a magical plant that can interact with players, players can experience various stories about the growth of vines and create a fantasy world like a dream.
Refik Anadol's works (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-EIVlHvHRM) show a fantastic, dreamlike artistic style. At the same time, he pays attention to the natural state of the facts and uses high-tech algorithms to help create them. I hope my interactive media can also imitate the slowly changing image animations in his works, which can bring a soothing and dreamy feeling.
By thinking about new narrative forms, I explored the possibility of player interaction with the game and how the player dynamics could be reflected in the game's characters in a fantastical style to get a fun and satisfying feeling.
