Wind Will Tell
Game for Healing - Exploring Therapeutic Landscapes as All-inclusive restorative environment
An immersive game journey through a series of globes in search of a dandelion, featuring ambient sounds of swaying grass, moving rails, and shifting cityscapes. With first-person and third-person perspectives, players immerse, heal, empathize with heightened perceptions of their surroundings, and contemplate their presence as a human, a plant's seed, or even the wind itself.
Technical Gameplay Artist, Narrative Designer, User Researcher, 3D Modeler
3D Game, Immersive, Healing through play, Therapeutic Art
Category
Role
Team
Duration
Tools
2 people
5 weeks (Spring 2023)
Unity (C#)/Blender/Arduino
Act I. Garden Globe
Act II. Train Globe
Act III. City Globe
Act IV. Dandelion Globe
The problem statement is…
Children with higher sensitivity, like orchids, struggle more to adapt to new environments or maintain focus.
The project envisions…
Through a restorative environment, reshape perceptions of our surroundings by fostering empathy and understanding among people with varying sensitivities.
Contributions
As the narrative designer, I led the environment storytelling and look development based on our experience goal:
Experience Goal:
1 Design a surreal, slow-paced, and emotionally evocative world, incorporating natural elements for immersion.
2 The interaction design is minimalist-style, focused on low-stimulus activities like planet walking to minimize distractions.
3 Guide players to embrace themselves and form meaningful connections with their environment.
Exposition: A step into nature
Climax: A dynamic spectacle
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Revealation: A tale of the wind
Post-climax: A curtain-fall
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As the technical gameplay artist, I solved these design challenges:
1
Interactive Feature - Perspective Change
Designed a simple single-key camera switch feature that lets players toggle effortlessly between perspectives. This encourages them to explore their spatial relationship with the globe (ground vs. air) and their interaction with the dandelion (searching vs. overseeing),
2
Visual Consistency - Post-Processing
Rendered the skybox and applied post-processing effects individually for each scene, tailored to the time of day and narrative progression.
3
Optimization - Customized Particle Spawner and LODs
Designed dandelion seed particles for the ending scene and set up two spawning points according to the player’s position. Used LODs to optimize performance on the high-poly planet.
Credits:
The project is a collaborative project by Yichen Pan and Hannah Oh
Role: Technical Gameplay Artist, Narrative Designer, User Researcher, 3D Modeler