ATUM
My Role: Production Management || Narrative & Environmental Storytelling Designer
Platform: PC
Game: Experimental game within a game.
The game explores multi-layer game design by using the mise en abyme literary device. The narrative is communicated by multiple in-game meta-references across the layers, with an emphasis on environmental storytelling to facilitate immersion and an integrated experience.
Developed by & in collaboration with:
ATUM has been designed to pull the players into a world where they themselves become a layer of the game’s narrative system. It brings a novel take on point-and-click gameplay in a 3D game environment and it combines it with 2D platform-game puzzles.
The design and the aesthetics are influenced by a manifold of science fiction classics, Blade Runner and Philip K. Dick's story Martian Time Slip among others. Dipping its layers in mathematical loops and philosophical recurrences.
The game environment, used as narrative device, provides a considerable amount of references and clues that complement the underlying storyline.
ATUM shows a new level of integration between mixed-genre game mechanics and narrative content, where the interaction between layers is the centre point of the gameplay experience. ATUM’s unification of multilayered and multi-genre interactions with the narrative
content suggests a path towards future experimentation with this relatively unexplored field of game design.
Credits
ATUM was developed by a group of 3rd year students at NHTV IGAD, the Netherlands as part of the University's Gamelab, a one-day-a-week workshop that simulates a development studio environment. The team, consisting of an average of 10 members, worked on this project for 42 days.
Team Cupcake: www.atumgame.com/team
Website: Elwin Verploegen
Trailers, Video Editing: Tino van der Kraan