TALE OF TALES game demo project

SIXTEEN PAGES

http://sixteenpages.net


screenshot

VIEWING REQUIREMENTS

  • Flash 5 player
  • 400Mhz CPU
  • sound amplification


INSTRUCTIONS
  1. Click big green spot in middle of graphic
  2. Move cursor to move charcter
  3. Follow path through labyrinth by making the character walk over objects
  4. Click on walls for temporary cheat mode (allows character to move through walls)
  5. Plus and minus keys for zooming
  6. If map doesn't scroll, push character against wall to reset collision detection
  7. Try and reach one of the 16 centers to access the web search engine (cheat of you need to, see 4.)


CREATORS
Auriea Harvey: concept, programming, graphics
Michaël Samyn: concept, programming, sounds


DESCRIPTION
Sixteenpages was commissioned by Hvdekorn, a Danish poetry magazine. They wanted us to design 16 pages in their magazine. We teleported these pages to the web and requested to be paid the symbolic sum the publisher saved by not having to print these pages.

Sixteenpages is a search engine interface. However, most of the searching is done by the user, who leads a character seen from above through a gigantic maze, picking up search terms as it goes along. The aim of the game is to reach one of the 16 centers of the maze where the user can finally send the collected search terms to the search engine, which responds with a web page.

This whimsical game plays agains a dramatic backdrop that links ancient Egyptian religious elements with contemporary commercial icons. The whole maze is devided up into 4 parts, representing the four elements and also the corresponding four organs of the human body that were taken out of the body of a king by the ancient Egyptians and put in four jars each in the shape of a god. These four sub-mazes each contain 4 centers that represent human activity. Together, these 16 activities represent the whole spectrum of human behaviour. The way all these symbols are linked through location and time is reminiscent of the way documents are linked on the world wide web. The web often seems like a maze that branches out like a fractal in all directions, yet everything remains connected and nothing is isolated.

Sixteenpages is an experiment in using game elements as a way to keep people in a virual environment. We have received reports of many people, telling us about the hours that they spent in the maze without ever finding one of the centers. Sixteenpages makes getting lost part of the process of searching. In fact the journey becomes more important than the destination. We like to call ourselves experts in the longest route between point A and point B.

Also, in Sixteenpages we apply the 3D concept of applying bitmap textures to vector shapes, to a 2D environment. Since developing Eden.Garden 1.0, thinking in three dimensions has become much more natural to us. Both from a conceptual as from a technical point of view.