Between the Cards is an interactive digital experience inspired by tarot cards.
The player explores a 3D landscape, interacts with characters, and completes tasks to uncover the story and its themes about life.
In concept, the player can explore various tarot-inspired landscapes and characters by selecting different tarot cards.
Although, in execution, we were only able to create the experience for one tarot card: The Fool.
This is a pandemic project, so our challenging experience informed the work we wanted to create.
Tools
Unity: development platform Blender: open source 3D creation suite Fungus: open source interactive storytelling Photoshop: graphics editor Wix: website builder
Purpose
The goal of Between the Cards is to provide a calm, introspective, and meditative
experience that brings peace to the player.
When speaking with the characters, they will casually discuss life's philosophies and experiences,
shining light on ideas that can provide comfort during struggling times.
The player can wander the landscape, mindfully observing its details while tuning in to the music.
Between the Cards
The Experience
Video Playthrough
Website
Process
Team Communication + Project Management
Throughout the creative process, Shannen and I had a lot of synchronous video meetings to manage our progress, discuss problems, and brainstorm solutions.
We wrote out all of our tasks and decided who would take on what.
Halfway through our project, we created a general plan and schedule for all the remaining of the stages and tasks of our project - this improved our time
management skills as we could see where we needed to use our time.
We also supported each other through asynchronous messages to bounce ideas and ask questions while we worked on our portion of the project.
During the semester, we also had regular project check-ins with our instructors, Emma Westecott and Hector Centeno,
where we would give updates and speak about our current road blocks.
Our combined efforts and teamwork led us to successfully create Between the Cards.
Prototype
The Between the Cards prototype features include moving the player with arrow keys, grey blocking two tarot-inspired landscapes,
grey blocking one tarot-inspired character, background music playing and looping,
the portal for the player to switch between two tarot-inspired landscapes, and setting up GitHub Desktop for us to collaborate on files.
Our largest challenge was cutting down our project: initially, we had planned on creating two tarot-inspired landscapes and characters,
but we had to narrow our outcome to only creating one tarot-inspired landscape and characters.
It was a tough decision: we had to manage our resources (time, energy, etc.)
and manage our obstacles (time, stress, etc.) to produce a polished final product.
We discussed this decision with our both our instructors, Emma Westecott and Hector Centeno, for their professional opinion
on the pros and cons.
Even though we loved the idea of showcasing two Between the Cards experiences, we did not feel that we could
execute both well given the circumstances and without burning ourselves out.
Reflection
I learnt a lot over the course of this project.
I appreciated that Shannen and I got to collaborate over a longer period of time,
three months - the entirety of a school semester, to flesh out a larger-scale project.
Not only did we improve our technically skills,
our teamwork and collaboration skills grew.
I am proud for my work during this process:
I tried 3D modelling by greyblocking the landscape (and realized 3D modelling was not for me haha!);
I wrote my first piece of code in Unity;
I found an open source interactive storytelling tool, Fungus, and learnt how to utilize it;
I captured documentation and media of our project;
I build a full website to showcase our project with Wix;
and more.
