MEMORIA NAVIS
A story-driven space exploration mission, centered around the use of Enophones: a BCI that monitors the players’ brain activity.
In Memoria Navis, you control a sentient spaceship and assist it in its’ mission to recollect the memories that have been taken from it.
Central to the gameplay is the use of Enophones; a pair of headphones worn by the user that reads brain activity ans converts it to usable gameplay input. Using this input, the brain’s activity is used throughout the game with cunning implementations all around.
I was fortunate enough to be lead game designer and UI artist on this group project in collaboration with Roel Heremans, a transdisciplinary artist from Belgium who supplied us with 2 pairs of Enophones.
The project started out with Roel approaching our team, wanting to make an interactive experience out of his already existing project; ‘The NeuroRight Arcades’.
During the course of the following 5 months, we (a team of 5 students) had designed, written, developed and created Memoria Navis; a truly unique gameplay experience.
STAY POSITIVE
Stay Positive is a 2.5D puzzle platformer wherein the player overcomes the dangerous environment of an abandoned factory, making clever use of their magnet to manipulate the environment to their advantage.
The world contains numerous magnetic objects that are interactable. The players’ task is to use the magnet attached to their head and manipulate the magnetic world around them.
Your magnet has 2 modes: attract and repel. Either one of these is always active, there is no turning off your magnet, which allows for interesting level/puzzle design.
The desired outcome of an action usually has some negative side effects. It is the players’ task to take this into account and work around it to solve the given problems.
As mentioned above, Stay Positive is all about problem solving. Action A leads to outcome B, C, …. Think ahead and be clever with the use of your magnet.
AWARE
Aware is a 3D horror puzzle solver that challenges the player to actively play against themself, forcing them to continuously be aware of their movement and actions in order to solve a given level.
Simply put: Aware’s objective is to escape every level you’re thrown into, by activating each portal in the level.
The player spawns on a color-coded platform, and proceeds to find a way to the corresponding color-coded portal in the level.
Upon walking through a portal, the player respawns on a different platform, and has to complete the same objective as before, only with a different portal.
Upon respawning, a bot spawns in the same level, executing the same exact actions the player took in their previous portal run.
The objective is to activate all portals in the level, without being spotted by all of the bots that execute your previous actions.
SPACE SHEPHERD
Space Shepherd is a single player meta-puzzle solver, situated in outer space, that challenges players to navigate through an unfamiliar environment with dynamic gravity in a peaceful manner, much like the life of a sheep herder.
The gameplay at its core is relatively simple. You receive a quest from a farmer, travel down to his little planet system and proceed to gather his sheep as requested.
Players will have to familiarize themselves with the environment and the sheep every time they land on a ranch, for these ranches/planets will each have their own gravity rules, and their sheep have adapted accordingly to this environment.
Once you have familiarized yourself with the environment, you can proceed to gather the sheep using your 2 dog companions. This is the main gameplay mechanic you use to gather sheep.
Using your trigger buttons, you place your dogs at the position you’re looking at. A beam of energy is formed between you and your dogs, and this is what you use to direct the sheep in a certain direction.
HEX
Hex is a top-down 2D puzzle game where pickups are used to dictate your every move in order to reach the next level.
The picture on the left depicts the most basic setup of a level. The player grabs the ‘move’ tile, uses it to move to the empty tile and is then able to grab the proceed tile to move to the next level.
Only one action can be stored at a time, which forces the player to think about their actions, because once a tile is grabbed, the action has to be executed. If the player grabs a different tile without having executed the one he or she is holding, the stored action gets removed and can not be used anymore.
