WEAVER
ABOUT
Poor Ruby has lost her sheep! Now she must venture away from the safety of the farm to find them. Luckily, the sheep left a handy trail of cotton balls to guide the way. To raise bridges, climb ropes, and cross sparkling rivers, Ruby must use the discarded wool to weave geometric shapes and then recycle the material when she's done to ensure she has enough for the trip. Hold on sheep, we're coming!
Weaver is a single player, 2D platformer game that utilizes both the keyboard and a Makey Makey device. To weave a new object or discard an old one, you must physically touch either a circle or square of fluffy yarn woven together with conductive copper threads. Using these crafted objects, you must move through a range of environmental puzzles to continue navigating through the world. If you don't take the time to gather wool and recycle woven creations, you wont have enough raw materials to make it entirely through the game -- so you better make Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle your new mantra.
GAME SCENES
Click the side arrows to view more
MY ROLE
Weaver was an independent project, giving me the opportunity to tackle every step of the game production pipeline -- with the guidance of helpful user feedback, of course. Below are some of the jobs I especially enjoyed:
Alternate Input Control
This game was one of my first experiences taking some of the controls off the keyboard and envisioning physical, tactile interactions. My goal was to give players an experience of touching and relying on the wool to further emphasize the environmental messages of the game.
Mixed Media Art
Because the theme of the game was on materiality -- along with the fact that I'm a known hoarder of fabrics and textiles because they bring me joy -- I wanted to bring a very textured, almost home-spun feeling to the world. I used a combination of 2D painting and manipulating photos of my fabrics to achieve this look.
2D Animation
I wanted the main character Lucy to be simple and geometric, but still pop against the rather wild and vivid background. To contrast the pastel sky, much of her color scheme is muted and earthy. I used 2D hand drawn techniques to animate her as she walks, swims, and jumps across the landscape.
General Programming
As this was an individual project, I implemented all the code myself -- hoorah.