Narrative designer &
Game designer
Made in 2017 (2 month project)
Group of 6 international team members
Urban project
Created with Unity, 3DS Max
and Premiere Pro
The Asters
Themes: Conviviality | Urbanism | Adults & Children
Pitch: Once upon a time, there was a sky, much different from ours.
Day and night, a thousand lights were sparkling in this infinite space, in order to bring joy and happiness.
This was due to the positive rays of the Asters, the souls of the stars.
However, one day, a giant explosion occurred, drowning the expressive lights of the Asters in darkness…
Concept
The Asters is an urban project made for the city of Valenciennes, located in the north of France. Marked by issues raised, the project consisted of working on the layout of a famous route in Valenciennes being renovated.
With an international team of students, we decided to create a unique scenery where adults and children would be amaze by what is shown. They would gather and share convivial moments together for the time of a crossing of the street while retrieving the identity of Valenciennes through its playful installations.
The players need to help the souls of the stars, the Asters, to go back to their home in the heavenly vault.
Each installation represents a mini-game that would, through gamification, let the visitors enjoy a short moment of admiration and happiness.
Gameplay
The bystanders needed to have an interest to visit the street, just by curiosity. In this generation marked by technology, we wanted the people to look up from their electronic devices and learn to observe what the world can offer. The mix of the colors, lights, sounds, shapes, made the magic possible and feasible, thanks to the technology of nowadays.
The positive feeling of helping others was transmitted through accomplishing the games placed in the street, as you help an Aster to go back home.
Consisting of 4 mini-games, one of them consisted to blow in rhythm with the color glow of a crystal to completely light it up, applying breathing relaxation exercises.
Another one allowed the bystanders to write positive messages, which would be projected on the wall of a building in the street (a control system was thought to keep "bad" words from being projected).
One had the player needed to follow the lights and sounds produced by trees by pressing the correct buttons to produce a nice melody.
Finally, the last game, consisted of finding the perfect combination of the 4 elements of a cristal to tame mavros, negative energies who want to hurt the asters.
We tried to keep the identity of Valenciennes through the crystal shaped devices we created, which are inspired by its mines and art nouveau.
Of course, we thought in terms of sustainable development regarding the chosen materials for the installations. Ecology and durability are important!
Narration
After studying the issues the street had, we decided to create a scripted universe for a street, where the Asters, the people of the stars, who landed on Earth live.
We wanted their story to be dramatic, but also optimistic, so as to transmit our intentions to adults and children alike.
Our main goal was collaboration, while sharing moments of conviviality in family, between friends or strangers to help these people to get back to their home.
The optimism and the courage to all trials of the Asters are as much values as we want to transmit to present generation, but also future ones.
Here, you can read the complete unfortunate tale of the Asters (available in french).
What I've learned...
How to arrange the street was a real challenge, but very enriching for us. We had to keep in mind the technical, budgetary constraints, but also study the local laws and so on.
The team was composed of students coming from different countries, so we had to communicate in English. To share our different backgrounds was very interesting, from a cultural point of view, but also human.
Also, we all came from varied courses. To work with each other allowed us to have a better perspective on people’s jobs we might work with. Basically, to be more cross-disciplinary.
This project is probably my favourite one as the message we tried to share has a strong moral value in order to make the world a better place.
Titan°
Monastery's snare
Team members
