Reflections on untitled photogrammetry game
I love this game, it's so strange. It makes me think of this recent post by thecatamites about removing things from games and being surprised there's still an effect. Despite all the models there's almost nothing here. No interaction, no real forking paths, no intentional visuals, no narrative. The best you can do is look for how I stitched the rooms together, but it's the same every time.
It's conceptual, as in, the vacuum created by moving away from narrative / "gameplay" is filled by concept. But just barely. I appreciate the vacuum here more than anything else. Truly the "concept" is visual - rarely used rendering technology, and it's archival - digging through zero-likes 3d scans online and finding something interesting there.
It gave me tetris effect type dreams that wouldn't go away until I finished working on it. It makes me think of the not quite rooms you think of in dreams or when you're reading a novel.
Not a lot more to say. I really like photogrammetry visually and I think there's more to do with it. Some ideas I plan on trying - relighting in blender, artistically decimating the scans, using a mix of styles for a collage effect, using some of my own scans to disrupt the assumption of the player that the scans don't have authorial intent, scanning in low light, etc. 3d scans are a pain to work with. I made this game over a weekend and the project files were 200gb.