S p A c E

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

This is a Game About the concept of "Space" within computer.

To be honest, I don’t know what we are doing when we finish this game. Rather than being a game in the conventional sense, this project feels more like a blog post or a diary created using a game engine. 

If you want to download, please scroll to the very bottom.

If you're curious about my thoughts behind this work, please keep reading. 

Level 1

The first level is a comparison between the openings of films and games. It uses the classic countdown sequence from old films as a timer. The opening sequence of films has never truly disappeared (at least not in China). In the past, it was a countdown; now, it might be a string of ads before the screening begins. This provides the audience with a buffer zone to prepare themselves, as films, being a non-interactive medium, is never under the audience's control. However, games are different. In gameplay, players actively engage with events rather than being passively shown or told about them, as they would be in novels, theater, or cinema. This holds true even at the openings of these works.

Beyond comparing the narrative dynamics of different media, the first level aims to disorient the player's perception by giving button movements and adding colliders to the cursor, thus defamiliarizing basic elements of an operating system. In game development, UI scenes exist on a Cartesian coordinate plane, yet we often forget this fact because typical UI scenes lack spatial depth, changes, or physical events. All that's left are abstract metaphors of physical actions, like “cut” or “click.”

 

Level 2

The second level consists of a progress bar and a snippet from the first film ever made, ‘L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat’ by the Lumière brothers.

First, similar to Level 1, we create a sense of defamiliarization by introducing interruptions or cracks in the UI space—players have to manually drag the progress bar to move to the next scene.

Next, let's discuss the relationship between the progress bar and ‘L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat’. This level explores the concept of the progress bar as a vehicle. The way it loads a game is similar to the function of many modern means of transport. Consider how, we use fast travel or move between save points in games—doesn't it feel like taking the subway, a train, or a plane? In such vehicles, people focus more on the speed of reaching their destination than on experiencing the space they pass through. In contrast, riding a horse or bike offers a deeper spatial experience. Trains and planes are typical examples of 'non-places.' In games, the UI space often serves a similar function, as if it were also a 'non-place.' Another intriguing point: trains bear a strong resemblance to progress bars in their physical form.

Lastly, the reason for choosing the Lumière brothers' film is that at that time, cinema had not yet fully developed its narrative capabilities. Like the UI space, L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat occupied a peripheral role in storytelling.

 

Level 3 

 This level requires players to repeatedly press the spacebar to "trigger bugs" and enter the Demon’s Negative Space. It's inspired by montage techniques in film, showcasing a series of meta-elements: game engines, virtual cameras, and Cartesian coordinates. Unlike films that achieve montage by pointing the camera at different objects, here we change the background directly while keeping the virtual camera stationary. This reminds me of how early animators separated the background from the foreground characters.

 

Level 4

In this level, you encounter a Demon—the last enemy hunting by ‘the player’. The Demon has long lost its vigor and wishes to remain in the Negative Space. In games, Negative Space refers to the unoccupied spaces within or around objects. We want to say sth about traditional game narratives by constructing a world shattered by the player’s aggression. Through the friendly Demon, we hint at a simple truth: the reason players can harm creatures in games is purely because their character has the right type of collider. If a player, after playing this level, ever hesitates and wonders, "Are there creatures I didn’t kill hiding in the Negative Space?" then we’ve achieved our goal.

 

Level 5

In this level, the world suddenly transforms into 3D, and players must find the correct “Door” among 3D model and images. This level reminds me of ‘This Is Not a Pipe’ or Joseph Kosuth's ‘One and Three Chairs’. Here, players can think about the illusion of perspective in games and the computer graphics. From the development of perspective algorithms in the 1960s to the simulation of shadows, reflections, and textures in the 1970s, and finally, to modern game engines like Unreal and movie special effects, computer-generated imagery has become increasingly realistic. Yet, no matter how photolike these images are, the virtual spaces they create remain entirely disconnected from reality—they are merely pixels.

 

Level 6

Similar to Level 4, this level introduces an old lady who enters the BOSS scene after 'the player' defeats the boss. She reflects on her relationship with computers. This level explores what happens when cultural forms like film and literature are digitized and processed. How do they transform both the field of computer science and themselves? Furthermore, what happens when "space" itself is digitized, as seen in modeling software, architecture, or the clay figures within games?

 

Final Level

This level showed a video with myself appearing on screen. Here, the player doesn't need to achieve any objectives or interact with anything explicitly. However, it involves a unique form of interaction that can only be achieved through coding: exposing the player’s desktop and activating their webcam. For me, the final level is a true horror story—my computer, in a sudden moment, turns to me and asks: Who are you? And who am I?

 

Conclusion

Taking a step back, the levels together form a complete game flow: an opening, gameplay progression, and a final recording like a credits roll. And like many games, this one also includes cycles and rebirth. However, instead of restarting from a specific checkpoint, the rebirth happens at the game’s entirety—three seconds after the player sees their own face, the game loops back to the start screen where a “Continue” button appears.

 

Written by Zishu Ning

 

Credits

• Zishu Ning: Producer/Artist/Programmer/Designer
• Zirongtai Li: Artist/Designer
• Zihe Song: Artist/Designer