If there was a war tribunal into Tamagotchi, we’re pretty sure here at the @rcade that we would be done for genocide. We left hundreds if not thousands of pixelated creatures starve to death while rolling around in their own mess and then we moved onto the Sims and that just got worse, we ask you who has the time to take care of other people, we can barely support ourselves let alone cyber people?! Now though something new, better and a hundred times cuter is coming our way and it’s brought to us by four of students from DKIT, who were kind enough to sit down and talk about their final year project, Flourish.
Can you tell us what Flourish is exactly?
Flourish is set in the bizarre world of Omeono (pronounced Oh-mi-oh-no) which is inhabited by a whole cast of appropriately odd characters, ranging from carnivorous plants to cute critters. Effectively the on-screen activity is a representation of the life-cycle of the species of Omeono and the user directly affects what happens in the scene by exploring the landscape. Through this process the participant indirectly controls the lives of the characters.
Where did the idea for it come from?
The idea for the project itself came from a group desire to create a piece based around the themes of growth and exploration. In order to achieve a genuine feeling of exploration we though it necessary that the piece would have no predefined objectives and no linear story- line, but rather the user would be free to “feel” around and explore Omeono however he/she felt best, we wanted to eliminate the necessity for the user’s thought as much as possible freeing them up to do what they feel. Our combined interest in growth and all things organic was the determining factor for the location or world in which Flourish is set.
Could Flourish be the next Tamagotchi or Spore?
It’s hard to say because we feel that Flourish is quite different to Tamagotchi and Spore. We don’t see Flourish as a god game as the creatures are self reliant and don’t depend on the user keeping them alive or making the right decisions for them.
The environment and creatures respond to touch and sound; can you tell us how that works?
Initially, when we pitched it, Flourish was to use both touch and sound as methods of interaction but we dropped the sound aspect as we felt that it really didn’t add all that much to the experience and we didn’t want to just tack it for no reason. As for the touch, we are using software written by Johnny Chung Lee (http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/) which effectively uses Wiimotes as infrared cameras allowing them to track IR light and communicate their coordinates to the computer using Bluetooth. Big Touch screens cost a lot of money so we had to go with this pseudo touch screen solution.
Flourish is still in development phase right now but is nearing completion, have there been any major hiccups along the way?
All things have ran quite smoothly actually. It’s the group’s first big project and we’ve all worked well together. Sorry that we’ve no interesting stories to tell you all. 🙂
Why do you think people are drawn to games/apps like Flourish?
We think people are drawn to apps like Flourish because people are inquisitive by nature. They like to see reactions to their actions and this is something that we think we’ve tapped into with Flourish.
Where can people get to take a closer look at Flourish?
Flourish will be on show to the public on the 2nd and 3rd of June at Fis, in the New Carrolls building on Dundalk Institute of Technology’s main campus at 6pm. Fis (http://creativemediaresearch.com/) is an exhibition that showcases the final year projects of 3rd and 4th year Creative Multimedia students, 4th year Video and Film students and 4th year Games Development students.
Finally if the team behind Flourish were trapped in an arcade for eternity, what game would you play to pass the time?
Padraig Birch: Fallout 3 or Bioshock.
Sean Smyth: Tetris or Street Fighter. That’s a hard decision!
Ros Madigan: Lemmings, because I can’t finish the damn thing!
Patrick Clarke: Metal Slug.
