After more than a year of the Covid-19 outbreak, we have undergone changes in the way we interact with others and the environment. Confinement and social distancing, extreme disinfection, online education, and remote work became part of the daily scenario.
These modalities have bought new habits and caused psychological effects that directly affect all areas of our life, including the way we relate to art.
Anguish at lockup and loneliness, worries about the economic crisis and concerns about the experimental vaccines. We find ourselves in a maze of uncertainty which exit we have not yet found, but when that happens, what will we have learned?
This exhibition brings together the work of artists who use the language of video games to explore these issues. Art games that involve the player directly to recreate these circumstances and enable to observe them from other perspectives.
Play at your own risk, it is not only an invitation to play, but also to reflect on the impacts of these sudden changes in society behavior.
An experimental, minimalistic microgame about loneliness, made for the Korean middle school students where Jordan taught for a year. Loneliness was an official selection of the Extra Credits Innovation Awards 2011, in the category of Narrative Delivery. It was also the focus of episode 25 of Extra Credits season 4: Mechanics as Metaphor.
Additional credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod.
I like to make games. I am particularly interested in how the most basic elements of interaction and representation can be used to craft meaning and impact in games, and in using games to tackle difficult subjects and complex emotions. Some of my better-known creations include Loneliness, Freedom Bridge, and the Gametrekking Omnibus: a collection of small games inspired by travel in Asia. I am an experienced programmer, interactive media artist, game developer, and entrepreneur with a passion for learning, teaching, and collaboration. In addition to these main areas of experience, my undergraduate background consists of an eclectic mix of humanities, film studies, philosophy, writing, computer science, art, and physics: I like to learn new things, and connect the dots between disciplines.
Just an Ordinary Room is a deconstruction of the escape room genre and at the same time a tribute to it. This game also pays homage to the Toshimitsu Takagi's classic escape room games, such as Crimson Room.
Credits:
RkkTKK: concept and audio design.
Supr: graphics and programming.
How to play: Use the 'WASD' keys to move around; use the left mouse click to interact; 0 to fullscreen mode; press 'ESC' to exit the game.
I like making short playful experiences. The areas of my interest are: real-time 3D graphics, procedural generation, procedural rhetoric, Unreal Engine art. I'm a member of the Russian art-games collective IBORG. I also co-curated a number of art-game exhibitions in Russia: !game≠game (2015); Games Not Games (2017).
I am a game studies scholar and a member of the Russian art-games collective IBORG. I find games as a medium defined by the intersection of interactivity and digitality and investigate the artistic language emerging from this specific set of conditions. I am also interested in non-conventional games and game practices, such as notgames, zero-player games, masocore, goldfarming, in-game cyberformances.
A virtual art gallery. Features a handful of contemporary works inside a neo brutalist structure. It explores the idea of the space itself being the main experience. How visitors explore the architecture without any direction or guidance. How natural light and shadows can be used to transform a rough space into a mystical place. How sound behaves in the ever-changing conditions of the architecture.
I am an indie game developer and freelance level designer/environmental artist based in Hamburg, Germany. My love for art and video games started when young and since I began to learn game development, I realized that video games is the perfect medium for my art. In Hamburg I grew up with a lot of interesting architecture and that's what draws me to transport them into my work. I create small experimental indie games. Most of them focus heavily on neo-brutalist architecture and some other on contemporary art ideas. All of them are immersive audio-visual experiences. Sound and music is very important to me and I really pay attention to creating the right atmosphere in my environments. The focus of my games is around their exploratory elements.
It’s okay to stay inside.
Reclaiming Solitude is a short game about the benefits of slowing down and taking time for yourself. The game is focused on a room, with very limited space for the player to move, and time only moves when interacting with any of the objects in it. It serves partly as a reminder of the benefits of relaxing indoors, and partly as a relaxing experience.
I'm a game designer and writer with an enthusiasm for crafting meaningful playable experiences. I make physical and digital games and installations that use interactivity to educate and inform, that tell stories in new and dynamic ways, and that push the boundaries of the medium.
Library of Blabber is an interactive adaptation of the short story The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges. It was originally written for the #procjam2015 competition. It is set in an endless library made up of connected hexagonal chambers, each containing four bookshelves. The titles and contents of the books on the shelves are all randomly generated. Some books are made up of random gibberish (in various alphabets) with no discernible words, while others consist of Markov chain-generated poetry and prose. The game has no specific objective, other than exploring the library and possibly finding interesting discoveries in its randomness.
I am from Belgrade, Serbia. I do a lot of game experiments, small games and jams. I’m always looking out to try as many new things and ideas as possible, and collaborate if I can. I am currently making games with procedural generation and first person experiences. I have a background in architecture and photography, and ventured into game development relatively recently, so I’m working on both code and art projects.
With a suspenseful atmosphere, this game proposes a little experience about being back home late at night. An empty and silent city is the scenario to explore. The project was entirely built with cubes.
Credits: Ambient sound from REPULSIVE.
How to play: Use the 'WASD' keys to move around; use the mouse to rotate the camera; use the 'E' key to interact with some objects; press 'ESC' to exit the game.
I'm a Spanish guy graduated in Computer Engineering, currently doing a Master in Videogames. Of course, I really like videogames. I'm a big fan of the horror genre, so I really enjoy designing and programming this kind of games.
2020 GAME is a web-based side-scrolling game, in which the player will need to avoid all major incidents that occurred in 2020. These incidents include Covid-19, the Australian bushfire, lockdowns, the stock market crash, the rise of tiktok, the USA elections, among others. Built with an achieved 2D pixel-art graphic style, this work evokes the early days of computer games.
I am an independent game designer and I love having total freedom to create my projects. Actually working on the development of new games.