Patricia Pabustan

-UN

Bachelor of Design Interactive Photogrammetry Unity Game Engine Puzzle Game Non-narrative Experimental

Unfold, Unravel, Unwind

-UN is a material centered puzzle game about deconstructing craft worlds, which answers the research question, "What methods can I use to develop a video game that expresses tactility through its aesthetic quality and gameplay?”

https://www.youtube.com/embed/XuMj2XsFz5I

-UN is a project that focuses upon the exploration of the game creation process with regards to the tactile sense or game feel. Game feel is a term popularized by Steve Swink in his book Game Feel: A Game Designer's Guide to Virtual Sensation that refers to "the tactile sensation experienced when interacting with video games" (Wikipedia 2018). For this project, I wanted to specifically focus on how I can express the feeling of tactility in a game through its aesthetics and gameplay. To achieve this, I decided to focus upon the textures of my assets and the sound design of my game. These areas were of particular interest to me as they are the areas that capture me most whenever I personally enjoy video games.

My work is particularly interesting as I explored various ways in which I could capture texture for use in a video game. I explored using digital cameras and paper sprites in hopes to achieve the tactile feeling through texture and ultimately decided to explore the process of Photogrammetry (otherwise known as 3D scanning). I decided to finalize the use of this process within my work as I noticed a rise in the use of this process within the game's industry. This process was new and unique to me and it was a risk to take as I was unsure of the quality of the outcome. Over the course of the project, it took me several attempts in order to get a model that I was somewhat satisfied with and even then, the final outcomes were not to what I had envisioned. It was an interesting process and one that I can continue to explore and refine.

-UN was informed by similarly satisfying puzzle games such as Lumino City (State of Play, 2014), Little Big Planet (Media Molecule, 2014) and Mu Cartographer (Titouan Millet, 2016).