Florescence

Project Website

A collaboration between Yuchen Xue, Stevo Yang, Jiuya Lin, and Jennifer Xing.

Florescence is a game about exploring a beautiful yet dangerous alien planet overflowing with pollen-like substances. You command a planetary rover to navigate through the hazards, use sound waves to scan and record data, and create a map of the terrain of this planet. By interacting with alien creatures and uncovering the previous remains, you will peek through the secret behind the flowering season.

We aim to produce a memorable playful experience of exploring an unknown environment. To achieve this, we designed two main mechanics of the game: a sonar device and a fully editable mapping system. Corresponding to the game mechanics, we created a beautiful alien environment with creatures that react to sound waves from the player. Original visuals, sounds, and UI design are made to immerse the player into this unique environment.

Sound waves interaction

In the game, you can emit sound waves of different pitches. The sound waves bounce between obstacles, and you can use them to explore roads in the fog. Meanwhile, you can interact with creatures in the game using sound waves, and they will respond differently based on the pitch of the sound wave. The creatures in the game also emit sound waves, and all the environmental sounds are calculated based on the pitch and propagation time of the waves.

Document the environment

Another major gameplay is manually documenting the surroundings in a mapping system. When the sound wave you emitted hits an obstacle, it leaves a pin on the map, marking the location of obstacles and terrain features. As you connect these pins, you’ll gradually uncover the full outline of the planet’s topography, and the planetary rover auto-dodge obstacles based on it. Danger lurks around every corner, but fortunately, you can also put marks or draw lines on the map to note and avoid them. This creates a unique game experience of cautiously moving in the fog, using sonar to detect surroundings, and documenting them on the map. While exploring and mapping the environment, players gain more knowledge about this alien planet.