Eclectic Guests
I have been developing this game for the last year, and am excited to release it soon! Eclectic Guests is an experimental narrative puzzle game about exploring a surreal hotel made from hand crafted paper cutouts. I am working on this game alone.
|
|
|
This game has undergone many different iterations, but eventually became a mix of what I felt like a game made from paper cutouts should be: a surreal mix of different character's perspectives.
|
|
|
Artist Statement
My initial goal with Eclectic Guests was to combine experimental puzzle gameplay with collage art. I’ve been passionate about collage art and making paper cutouts since high school, and I felt like capstone was an opportunity to make an experimental art game that really leaned into an analog collage art style. The chance to try and make something really strange and experimental with a medium I wasn’t sure could even translate to a video game was a risk, but the challenge felt like an opportunity to try and define myself as an artist. The process was really difficult. I tried a lot of different ideas, and honestly if it weren’t for my teachers and friends I would’ve given up. It was incredibly difficult to make a game that felt expressive and honest despite play testers really not understanding my vision. Although I am happy with where the game is right now it has a long way to go before I am going to feel finished with it.
The largest metaphor in Eclectic Guests I aim to explore involves cutouts of images and paper as a juxtaposition of people’s lives as they pass each other by. The surreal hotel rooms represent people temporarily occupying small spaces in a world of people living side by side and how our individual identity transforms the places around us before we move on. Life is temporary, and how we feel in each moment is also temporary as well. Each montage is an abstract representation of that guest’s mental state, but it isn’t meant to be taken as who they are or how they want to be scene. The privacy of the hotel room is meant to parallel the subconscious passing of thoughts and feelings, and their stay in the hotel and that mental space is meant to be taken as a very surreal and temporary opening of that guests subconscious. The montages represent everything from restless thoughts to complacency, contemplative satisfaction to pain, and impatience to excitement. Through the images of the guest’s rooms I also aim to examine identity in terms of where we belong in a world made of changing bits and pieces, and how we experience the manifestations of our subconscious.
I also aimed to parallel the concrete process of layering pieces of paper to create a collage with the mechanic of traveling through layers of the guest’s thoughts. In a more finalized version of the game, each guest will have multiple montage scenes that suggest a transformation and journey through their mind.
Overall, Eclectic Guests explores people’s lives cut and pieced together, and that’s why the game is a series of collaged montages. Hotel rooms are a collage of people lives adjacent to each other, coming and going, changing and dreaming.
Process
My first prototype was a point and click puzzle game involving dragging and dropping objects around the scene. Different objects would interact in different ways until the puzzle was solved. The mechanic was interesting, but it felt bothersome how unpredictable the interactions could be and players would just drag and drop things as fast as possible. In hopes of making more contemplative puzzles, I started making a detective game instead, which ended up being too ambitious so I scaled it back to a mix of the two ideas. These are some images of my old prototypes.
My initial goal with Eclectic Guests was to combine experimental puzzle gameplay with collage art. I’ve been passionate about collage art and making paper cutouts since high school, and I felt like capstone was an opportunity to make an experimental art game that really leaned into an analog collage art style. The chance to try and make something really strange and experimental with a medium I wasn’t sure could even translate to a video game was a risk, but the challenge felt like an opportunity to try and define myself as an artist. The process was really difficult. I tried a lot of different ideas, and honestly if it weren’t for my teachers and friends I would’ve given up. It was incredibly difficult to make a game that felt expressive and honest despite play testers really not understanding my vision. Although I am happy with where the game is right now it has a long way to go before I am going to feel finished with it.
The largest metaphor in Eclectic Guests I aim to explore involves cutouts of images and paper as a juxtaposition of people’s lives as they pass each other by. The surreal hotel rooms represent people temporarily occupying small spaces in a world of people living side by side and how our individual identity transforms the places around us before we move on. Life is temporary, and how we feel in each moment is also temporary as well. Each montage is an abstract representation of that guest’s mental state, but it isn’t meant to be taken as who they are or how they want to be scene. The privacy of the hotel room is meant to parallel the subconscious passing of thoughts and feelings, and their stay in the hotel and that mental space is meant to be taken as a very surreal and temporary opening of that guests subconscious. The montages represent everything from restless thoughts to complacency, contemplative satisfaction to pain, and impatience to excitement. Through the images of the guest’s rooms I also aim to examine identity in terms of where we belong in a world made of changing bits and pieces, and how we experience the manifestations of our subconscious.
I also aimed to parallel the concrete process of layering pieces of paper to create a collage with the mechanic of traveling through layers of the guest’s thoughts. In a more finalized version of the game, each guest will have multiple montage scenes that suggest a transformation and journey through their mind.
Overall, Eclectic Guests explores people’s lives cut and pieced together, and that’s why the game is a series of collaged montages. Hotel rooms are a collage of people lives adjacent to each other, coming and going, changing and dreaming.
Process
My first prototype was a point and click puzzle game involving dragging and dropping objects around the scene. Different objects would interact in different ways until the puzzle was solved. The mechanic was interesting, but it felt bothersome how unpredictable the interactions could be and players would just drag and drop things as fast as possible. In hopes of making more contemplative puzzles, I started making a detective game instead, which ended up being too ambitious so I scaled it back to a mix of the two ideas. These are some images of my old prototypes.
|
|
|
|
|
