Set in a mountain valley somewhere in Asia Solace’s goal was to be a relaxing and peaceful experience for the user. The “game” features 3 distinct locations, each varying in interactivity and design.

The main valley allows free walking around and exploring of the surrounding area. The landscape, though limited in size, has several noteworthy locations to behold.

The bamboo forest restricts the player’s movement to the spot he arrives in. The player is given a naginata with which he can chop at the bamboo trees in front of him. When the calming wind flows past the bamboo trees will whistle in varying pitch depending on the length of the remaining stump.

Inside the castle is the relaxing zen garden. The player controls a stick with which he can rake around the sand in the garden.

Controls:
Main valley
Mouse to look around
W, A, S, D to walk around
Space to reset the camera
Esc to quit
Follow the instructions on screen to switch area, follow the path to find locations of interest.

Bamboo forest
Mouse to look around
Left mouse button to chop
Space to reset the bamboo
Look down at the path and follow the instructions on screen to leave.

Zen garden
W, A, S, D to walk around
Right mouse button to toggle between looking around and raking
Click the bucket to reset the garden
Approach the door and follow the instructions on screen to leave.

click to download game (28mb)

For this exercise we were assigned a writing student and a painter and told to create an interactive representation of one or more of that painter’s works. In my case that painter was Caspar David Friedrich, the German romantic era painter.

While researching his work we found that there are certain elements Friedrich constantly refers to in his work and we chose to focus on these elements rather than on a specific painting. The elements we chose were the ruins of Eldena, the fact that most of his paintings of people have them facing away from us (especially inspired by the Wanderer in the mist), loneliness, and the dreariness of death and decay.

We combined these elements into a simple moving painting where the only control the user has is the progress of time. With this slider time slowly passes, the ruins crumble, the character gets older and eventually dies and all colour fades away. There are several distinct steps along the slider and it cannot go back (time, after all, cannot go back either). Move it too fast and you will miss some steps.

Controls:
Use the mouse to drag the slider
R to reset
Esc to quit

click to download game (12mb)