Be quiet.
WORKSHOP Joypad with Game Designers
SOFTWARE Processing, PureData, Arduino, Photoshop
DURATION 4 days, March 2019
In collaboration with Simon Renault, Martin Lamiré, Andrews Kimbembe and Sébastien Reischek-Boursier
Brief / Concept
Be Quiet was born in 4 days at the end of a workshop between Game Design students and Interaction Design students. Be Quiet is a 1 versus 1 horror game where one of the players is the chaser (a mad beast), the other one is the chased (a poor scientist). The hunter, whose blind, spot the chased only with the help of the sounds produced by the latter; we have Spatialized sound thanks to Pure Data, a visual programming language used to create interactive computer music. The goal of the scientist is to escape by turning on three generators but he can’t see the beast so he needs to use a sonar to locate himself. Every one of his actions, even his heartbeat, are heard by the beast so he needs to be quiet…
Gameplay
The game is played by two players with two very differents gameplay, you are either the beast chasing or the scientist being chased. As the scientist you are deaf but you can see. With a controller (made with Arduino) you have to look for the generators on the playground but since it’s pitch black you can’t see them. You do have a sonar with you though, you have to activate it to locate the generators, but the blind beast can hear it. Once the scientist has activated the 3 generators the exit door reveals itself and if the scientist manage to get to it he wins ! But careful, since it’s pitch black you can’t see the beast either, you have to locate it with you sonar as well…
As the beast you are blind. The player has something blocking his sight and headphones on. Since the sound is spatialized, the beast can locate the scientist by listening to his heartbeats and the sonar if he is used. The beast is always going forward, he must rotate on himself according to if he hears the scientist on his left or right side to kill him. To do so we managed to get the data of the gyroscope of one of our phone, this way with the phone in hand and rotating on himself he moves toward the scientist.
Artistic direction
Be Quiet is a retro horror game, well that is what we wanted to do with it anyway. Something that we wanted to transliterate was how video games were in the 80’s. You know, how the artwork was incredible, epic and full of promises. But the actual game was 2 pixels of different colors fighting each other. That is why the artistic direction of the actual game is quite simple. The scientist if a white square, the beast is a big black circle on a black playground and that is it. But to make it like the 80’s we needed our full of promises artwork. So we made our reseaches on what kind of inspirations we wanted to work with
With all that we started to design our own artwork with the aim to build a real/fake gigantic video game box like in the old days. Here are below the pattern of the game box of Be Quiet. ©
