05 - Bridgespeak
My guide, titled Bridgespeak, is a guide about bridges.
I chose to make a first-person interactive guide in Unity mostly because I’ve been wanting to make something more abstract in Unity for a while now. I’ve had some experience making games, but I’ve never taken the time to explore it more creatively. I was especially interested in experimenting with importing 3D scans into Unity to use as objects that the player can interact with.
I departed with the idea of using recordings of voices on the bridges after I conducted a few informal interviews with friends and family. Mostly everyone who I talked to agreed that being on a bridge is a somewhat isolating experience. I personally agree with this too, and I thought it was interesting that bridges, which are designed to bring us together, can feel isolating at the same time. It sounds like it might be isolating for some due to the fact that you are essentially suspended in the air, and your movement is restricted. Especially if you are driving in a car, you don’t have much room to move besides forward and back.
I like the idea of my guide; I think there are a couple of interesting moments that I wish I could expand on a bit more, especially the third section of the game titled “Yggdrasil.” In Norse cosmology, Yggdrasil is a sacred tree that bridges together literally everything, including the “Nine Worlds.” I’ve known for a while that I wanted to incorporate this metaphor into the guide, but I feel like the section ended up coming up short due to time constraints and my own frustration with 3D modeling. I’d like to keep working on the project, though; I have a lot more ideas of smaller improvements that I could make, or places where I could try even more creative techniques.
In the third section, as the player climbs up the seemingly endless staircase, they continually lose speed, until they are essentially rendered motionless. This might be my favorite part of the guide, but again, I could definitely tie in more inspiration from Norse cosmology to make it all mean something more.
This guide will be successful in my opinion if it intrigues its viewers. Obviously, I’m not actually teaching anything about bridges; my goal was more to quickly move the player through lots of bridged environments, where each environment carries a distinct feeling that will be unique to each player. For example, the second bridge (the wooden one over a white background) reminds me of my childhood in Washington State, and it’s quite pleasant to look at. Some of the other bridges are much less pleasant, and maybe even a bit scary.
For feedback, I’d love to hear more about what you want to see more of; for me, I want to expand on the portal on the third bridge and the Yggdrasil chapter, but maybe there’s another part that’s more interesting to you.
