Video Game Concept
What Happened Here is exploring a fantasy about flying, exploration, learning about history, and enjoying the beautiful word around us. An ongoing project inspired by video game design, Black Mirror, and dreams.
This is an ongoing project, that I doubt will ever be “finished”, but gives me great joy.
Background
It all started with a dream that felt like I was in a video game. This wasn’t the first time I dreamt about flying, I love flying dreams, this was different.
This looked like an old flying simulator I played when I was young. The name escapes me, but it was one of the first games I played on our family computer. I remember it being incredibly difficult.
This dream, appeared like a response to this childhood memory. I saw myself flying over the water, towards an island, with great ease. With a beautiful interface reminiscent of those in Black Mirror.
It’s rare that I have creative dreams, but I’m fortunate to have them sometimes. This one was definitely top tier. I had no clear idea initially how to approach this, but I knew I had to do something with this idea.
Exploration
This was an attempt at world building, at such a massive scale. It felt scary and overwhelming at times. My ideas never seem to be small. But despite this, I’ve mostly created short stories. And here I was attempting to write my own sci-fi universe.
As I put the words in a document, and gathered inspirational materials, the story slowly took shape. As the story was taking shape, so did some of the characters, their names, appearance and backstories.
User Interface
One of the most fun part of the project was creating the user interface. I’m not professionally trained as a game designer, and I don’t pretend to be.
This was a learning experience to put all my experience from customizing my World of Warcraft interfaces into practice in a different way. Taking inspiration from leaders in the field and making my own adaptation of it.
Currently I am working on a moving version of this in Premier Pro and After effects. I hope to share it here soon.
Demo Website
I’ve created a Demo website for “What Happened Here”, as a video game concept. A simple landing page that in itself attempts to be a journey, by using movement.
Inspiration
Inspiration Black Mirror, Cosmos a Space Odessey, an old flight simulator game, Overwatch, Fringe, Black Mirror, thisisnotporn, Unsplash and Momentum.
Credits
Photos (in order of appearance on the demo) by: NASA, Jason Blackeye, Benjamin Behre, Serhat Beyazkaya, Natalya Letunova, Mohammad Metri, Diana Simumpande, Julian Santa Ana, Parth Upadhyay, Prince Akachi, Santiago Esquivel & Unknown via pixabay (please contact for credit).
