The Salvaged Self

Mark Eyles, Joe Eyles, Phil Hearne

    Research output: Non-textual formArtefact

    Abstract

    A sci-fi art game meditating on life, death and consciousness. Journey into space through a fragmented memory palace.
    The Salvaged Self was developed for Ambient Quest Studios Ltd by Mark Eyles, Joe Eyles and Phil Hearne in their spare time from 2015-2018.Game description:
    An art game meditating on life, after-death and consciousness.A journey into space through a fragmented memory palace.An illustrated interactive prose poem of ambient moments.Salvaging of self through the voice hidden in photomontages.
    The game comprises eight chapters, each a single searchable screen. There are 120 spoken fragments of memory scattered across the eight chapters that together conjure an impressionistic story. Note that there is an underlying hard science fiction story, though initial impressions might suggest otherwise.This is an art game. There is little gameplay, the beginning is a bit confusing and so is the end. The middle requires player effort to untangle the story and figure out what is happening! A single play through probably lasts just over an hour (depending on how it is played). The gameplay draws on ideas of ambience and ambiguity previously explored in Mark Eyles' research. The game also focuses on a way of telling a story that relies on player cognitive effort to unravel what is happening. The connection between story and cognitive effort is currently being explored by Matthew Higgins as part of his PhD research.
    The gameplay is a hybrid of point & click adventure and first person shooter with the world moving while the pointer (cross hairs) remains in the centre of the screen. The core gameplay is the exploration of each screen by zooming in and out in order to navigate and search.
    Even though it has not been officially launched yet a PC version of the game is currently available. An Android version is to follow soon.
    Original languageEnglish
    Place of PublicationUK
    PublisherAmbient Quest Studios Limited
    Media of outputOnline
    Publication statusPublished - 2018

    Keywords

    • computer games
    • art game

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