Hey there,
Last weekend (17.-19. of April 2015) I made a small little interactive project. I still have trouble calling it a game, since I didn’t really mean to make one.
The idea started out at a university gathering about Unity, where I had an idea about using particles to “paint” / interact with your surroundings. My inspiration for this came from the video of the project “Traces” by James Alliban. I noticed how the particles would sometimes bounce of the ground and I thought it would be interesting to create an experiment in which you are technically blind and can only discover the shape of your environment by bouncing particles of it.
Originally this was meant to work with the Kinect v2, but after finding out that the SDK would not work with Windows 7, I changed the idea to focus more heavily on exploration with traditional FPS controls. Painting the environment suddenly turned from a hassle to a lot of fun. (I spent a better part of the gamejam just painting the environments I had built).
At the same time the fleeting impressions the particles generate for a short while, increase the feeling of strangeness and loneliness.
After I had built the first prototype with a complete level I contacted a good friend of mine to help me with some level design. He made a amazing tutorial level and even created a simple menu, while I was asleep in Germany and the day was passing in the US.
Together we were able to create BlindSpot [Sources].
There is no real end yet, but I really like the possibilities of this idea and will try to keep working on it.
For future levels I would concentrate more on interacting with the environment through the particles in different ways and telling a simple story / building a world through the objects you can find through exploration.
I would also like to try to test this on some 3D Glasses / VR Goggles, but will somehow need to get my hands on the hardware first. ;)
I also want to employ 3D sound more to help with navigation.
Cheers,
John