Lunar Limbo
Voice Recognition, Audio-based Storytelling
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For the Global Game Jam of 2018, Ron Dekker and I made a game, which worked with audio only. The player could wear a headset and go through a branching narrative using only their voice as a control. They would get to talk to the characters in the narrative and even give them orders.
A clever system built by Ron Dekker allowed players to speak in normal sentences, while the system retrieved the necessary information to move on through the story. My main contribution to this project was the writing and creation of the narrative content, while Ron built the voice-recognition and speech systems. Lunar Limbo won the Innovation Prize at the Global Game Jam in Groningen, 2018. Programmed by Ron Dekker |
De Symfonie van vincent
GRAIL-based Virtual Reality rehabilitation game.
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De Symfonie van Vincent is a game created at the GRAIL Jam in the Sint Maartenskliniek in Nijmegen, over the course of a single weekend. The goal of this gamejam was to create new innovative concepts that would be used to improve medical rehabilitation and, in specific, walking.
The game is only playable on the GRAIL(Gait Realtime Analysis Interactive Lab), which is a virtual reality environment, with a treadmill in the center. This treadmill is split in the center, it can tilt, move, shake and both halves can run seperately. It also includes a surround sound system. Our final concept was focused on the addition of humour to the therapy, with the aim of creating an entirely positive experience for the patients. The entire goal of these therapies is to allow people to walk again, to improve their lives and to give them the joy of walking. We created this joy in our game through humour, immersion and a sense of agency. In this game, the player has control over the vocal chords of Vincent, an opera singer. He has to walk to the right position of the treadmill, which can be stationary or moving, to catch the notes a they fly in from the sides. When they catch the notes, Vincent sings smoothly and in time with the epic theatrical music that plays. When the player is too late.. Vincent misses his notes and fails miserably, which would cause the audience to throw tomatoes, laugh and boo. Every note, whether the player hits it or not, might give percussions on the treadmill, depending on the note sung. Notes with vibrato make the treadmill vibrate, high notes make it tilt upwards, low notes downwards, etc. De Symfonie van Vincent won Third Place at the GRAILJam in the SintMaartenskliniek in Nijmegen. Programmed by Ron Dekker, Art by Sophie Walker and Lotta Brüning, music and voices by Robert-Jan Zandvoort |
Holy tower
Emergent story-telling.
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What we created, with our two man team, is a semi-text based game, in which the player is a wise man, priest-like figure. The player’s job is to help him and the village to survive by bringing offerings to the god-like guardians. The villagers will come to the player to ask his help with the issues that they face, be it floods, broken bridges, plagues, storms or whatnot.The player has a free choice of which of the three gods to bring an offer to, and also what that offer is. This creates a sense of agency as their choices actively influence and change the game world.
The game was made using only two “Colours”: Black and White, is playable with a SNES to usb controller and runs on Windows Holy Tower won the Award for Best Story-Telling Game at the Global Game Jam in Groningen, 2016. Programmed and co-designed by Ron Dekker. |