Muse is a project me and 9 other students had to make for a museum in Amsterdam. The goal was to make a game that is inspired on a art collection of the artist Hito Steyerl. You stand in a workshop, there is a blank canvas in front of you, only you don't fill it in the traditional way. In this workshop are a objects you can interact with. Some objects are not so easy to find, these objects may be locked away somewhere and you have to find out how to get these objects. Other items can be combined to make something new to get to somewhere. The gameplay has the "how not to see" part of Hito in mind, not necessarily just with the hidden items, but also that the solution to getting to something isn't always quite as it seems.

 

My Contribution

I was mostly in charge of how thing went and how to game looks in the end. Importing art and assets that the game-artists made was also a big part I participated in. When artist provided me with art they made for the game, I started by using an "empty game object" in Unity and then making materials of the art the artists made, then set the materials to cutout and then I had an items I could use in the game. One of the artists made a template room first so I could use that to get an idea of where items need to be placed, but for some items I just needed to find the right place myself. Second point was to upscale the art I've received.

Upscaling assets

On first glance it was blurry and not well optimized for the scale we used in Unity. So I sat down with the artist who made the background and upscaled it to the correct scale so it wouldn't come out blurry in-game.

Interaction with items

On the first tests we did, players found it hard to see which items the player could interact with, so I added a little glow effect to items so that it would make it easier. Locations of interactable puzzles or items also where not in the correct position, so I moved to colors of the color game with the safe a bit to the right, removed the color squares upon opening the safe, made an cutout of the canvas picture and added them to the canvas in Unity.

Radio message

One of the last things I added was a radio message to give a clue for the map mini-game. I spoke in a  message with my headset, edited it in "Audacity" do add a radio static effect and then imported it into Unity and added some code to play it in-game. 

This is just one of the code script I made, but I also assisted with other scripts together with my colleague student in this project. for that to see, click the Github link found in the top right corner.