Rune Bear: Trails of Memory

Rune Bear: Trails of Memory is a speculative narrative experience driven by olfactory exploration that explores the challenge of embodying a non-human perspective in nature. Through scent-driven gameplay, via scent tokens, players explore a physical scent map of the region. This project delves deep into the concept of the Umwelt: the unique way an animal experiences the world through its own unique senses, in an effort to immerse the player in the sensorial world of the grizzly bear. Rune Bear’s rich digital narrative details the origin of the myriad of scents in the physical map, in recreation of the Grizzly’s natural habitat, while leaving enough room for interpretation as they discern the story behind each scent. The project is a novel approach for alternative storytelling regarding animals where the anthropocentric narrative around nature reigns supreme and ideally will aid in fostering empathy for those animals.

The major challenge of this project was figuring out the most effective way to have the scents drive the narrative. Smelling, being the key conceptual component of the project, is the primary action experiencers take in order to explore the narrative and thus it had to be engaging enough to hold interest against the static text on a screen that is the narrative.

Navigating the narrative via smell was the component that underwent the most testing in prototyping from being just an abstract visual on the novel’s screen, to becoming the solution to in-game puzzles, to being painted on materials serving only as reference to the novel, to finally becoming the actual “choices” within the narrative to reward the players with more text and story progression as shown above.

Despite all of its different iterations, it remained the component people were most excited to try. While the narrative was praised as strong all around, the smelling portions of the Rune Bear Experience were always the most engaging parts of the playtesting stage. Thus I aimed to keep that energy players had smelling throughout their progression in the narrative as it got them into the bear’s mindset.

When building the maps and area progressions the natural layout was key for the illusion of the space in which the story took place in.

The space couldn’t feel to artificial or progression would make little sense in the worldview of the bear.

So looking at park spaces helped inform a more dynamic design in keeping with the chaos of natural growth.

Ultimately leading to a vast scent map where each color details specific entries into what might have happened in that region of the forest from the Rune Bear’s perspective!