Anxiety

Controls:

WASD or arrow keys to steer the ship

spacebar to accelerate

U key to deccelerate

I and O keys to rotate the ship

This was a personal project I worked on during my 4th year of university. I wanted to try making a game where the mechanics and environment expressed something to the player. In the game, the player controls a ship and flies around 3D space collecting objects.
Text narration displayed on screen changes every time the player collects another object. The objects act as physical manifestations of anxiety and the narration functions as the inner thoughts of someone gradually slipping into an anxiety attack. The text is deliberately vague in order to make the game relatable to any experiences of anxiety a potential player may have had in their life.

The narration is split into two voices by showing some text in white and other text in purple. These two voices express the inner turmoil inside someone's head when they suffer from anxiety. The first voice reflects a person's uncertainty; questioning their actions and expressing doubts on the situation. The second shows the sorts of pressures a person can put on themselves. It's start out telling the player that others are dependent of them on completing the task at hand and then it slowly becomes more hostile.

As the narration progresses, things in the game change to convey a sense of rising panic to the player. The anxiety objects increase in number and start moving to new positions whenever one is collected. The colours of the ship and sky gradually shift to a yellow colour to match the terrain. The ship at one point starts to spiral and later slows to a crawl. Towards the very end of the game, the anxiety objects start to spawn lower in the sky and the heights and depths of the terrain increase with each new object collected. The changes in the terrain cause the game to halt briefly as each new version of the terrain is generated. I originally saw this as a technical problem to fix but then realised that it was actually an effective way of showing the player how badly an anxiety attack can effect a person. Eventually the lower position of the objects and the harsher terrain, leave the player with no option but to crash.

The game was made using Unity 5. It uses Perlin Noise to generate the terrain and a flow of particles that shows the ship's propulsion. Unity's physics are used to move the ship with a camera set to follow the ship from behind at a set distance. The ship model, skybox textures and water texture are from the following links:
opengameart.org/content/racing-ship-2d3d
opengameart.org/content/red-eclipse-skyboxes
opengameart.org/content/water-caustics-effect-small
The music track was made by Edward Naylor. His portfolio can be found here: edwardnaylor.weebly.com