Dreamcore
An Interactive Game Made by Unreal Engine
This is a game about exploring dream fragments in an uncanny setting. Players will walk into a dilapidated but familiar amusement park, scattered with fragmented clues about dreams throughout. Players will need to explore by themselves and find four complete dream fragments in order to complete the game. Each time the player triggers a dream fragment, corresponding interaction effects, and the affiliated story will appear on the screen. As the four pieces are collected, the player will realize that this is a story in the Dreamcore, waking up to realize that this is all a dream.
time: Mar - April 2022
team: Eva Zhou and Coco Ma
Background and Concept
Our idea came from the concept of the Dreamcore and our dream notes. Dreamcore, also known as Dreamy, is a weird core that revolves around "dream", which generally revolves around surreal dreamscapes. Using spirals, moving patterns, eyes, and optical illusions, the Dreamcore conveys a surreal environment and the undeniable feeling that things are going to go wrong. The reappearance of the mundane, the daily tasks, the long-lost elements, such as the deserted sights visited during adolescence, are the elements that players have seen, yet faded into space over time. While the players are experiencing a new game, the familiarity and connection back to memories will consistently remain.
We want to show some of the "things that are in the deepest memory" in front of us. This kind of strange feeling that "I" is not present at all. Everything in the dream deconstructs the subjectivity of "I": I don't exist, I'm meaningless, I'm nothing. We hope to weave in the balance between claustrophobia and openness, the struggles with the self and the other, the obvious feeling of danger and ultimate safety, the banal ordinary and the bizarre abnormal, the throat-cutting sharp and the absolute vagueness/dullness. These feelings ultimately translate the players into a fragile balance of feeling extremely intimate, yet alienated from everything else.
In fact, our dreams are often made up of impressive pictures and scenes in our minds. Yet, we often feel an inexplicable sense of loneliness in our dreams. Even if there are many people, we will feel isolated, like participating but not fully participating.
There is a muscular tension in these unities of opposites that makes you anxious. You look at it, and it looks at you; even if it reveals despair, it still feels so beautiful.
Excerpts from dream note:
04/06/18 10:13 am
dream about a murder mystery. Me, Female A, Male A, can't remember others.Female A killed her boyfriend male A, and she ate his body and boiled him into two pieces of meat. Female A said she masturbated a lot in front of her dead boyfriend`s body??? and she cut herself two pieces of meat just to pretend to be the victim. She told me these in private when I asked her what happened. I think im a police officer. or an investigator.
03/28/21 1:17 pm Sleep in the morning
But that bag was in a brown packaged, drum, a brand of hand-rolling tobacco. I said it's not; I never do that. That bag is tobacco. But the police didn't listen. Someone like a drug rehab agency dragged me out of the car, and I remembered I was wrapped in a quilt and naked inside. They said I`m not good and put a sticker on me. The two women also said they were fishing law enforcement. Your car has been parked on the side of the road for so long.03/23/20 03:43 pm
So I wanted to go to the seat in front of him. But there was already a girl sitting. There is a black leather tote bag next to the chair. Male B still seems to know her very well.But when I go back. It was raining outside of the theater, so I couldn't use the escalator. I can only take the elevator. It's a hexagonal space. I remember that I had to go to a place on the second floor where I can get my shoes. I should have pressed the down button, but the elevator shows going up, and I'm not surprised at all. It was still raining when the button was pressed. I don't remember what the guy at the elevator said to me; I don't remember.
I can't remember clearly. What were three words came out when I typed Biandu Cafe on the map? It seems to be very important.