rh5140 / dma-172

wizard wildlife watch

W24 DMA 172 Project: Nebulosus Reverie

This is a dreamy, fantastical world with animals that can turn into clouds. I originally wanted to design my own unique creatures, but that turned out to be pretty hard, so I made cloudy versions of some animals endemic to Taiwan. I think people should respect wild animals and keep their distance instead of trying to treat them like they would pets/possessions, so the music (composed by my dear friend Alvin) cuts out when you get too close to an animal and startle it. Hopefully, this encourages people to back off instead of continuing to get closer, which will cause the animal to disappear into a cloud. Originally, I was going to make an animal photography game because I like taking photos of animals, but this felt less like a direction I wanted to go in as the quarter went on. One major source of inspiration is Lucifer, my suitemate's cat, and my experience learning how to live in the same space as him. Lucifer actually gets annoyed at me if I'm on my phone in his presence (even if I'm using it to look up stuff like "what does this cat behavior mean"), and he once even grabbed my hand and pulled it. I felt like I should probably focus on being present in the experience with an animal rather than mediating it through a phone screen after that happened.