The Interaction Voyage

Interactive Media

in collaboration with:

Alexandra Kogia

Inspired by old sea traveler maps and looking for ways to play on connectivity, Alexandra Kogia and I created a game in Touchdesigner where one wins based on achieved interaction. As the commanding captain, you control all of the movements of the ship with your phone. Get the vessel from Greece to Mexico and vice-versa and win interaction points on every successful trip, but be careful, rocks and sea monsters will block your path! Crash into obstacles or the mainland more than three times and you lose the game. The point of the game is to grow the network and increase connectivity! Just as the great explorers did many years ago.

The ship responds to the accelerometer of one´s phone (only considers x and z coordinates). As your phone moves, so
will the ship.

Touch OSC layout displaying on your phone screen allows you to increase the difficulty of the game by adding obstacles, zoom in and zoom out the camera, and change the display of water particles within the game.

The Interaction Voyage gameplay in relationship with the Touch OSC user interface on the player´s phone. Current setup shows maximum view with no zoom, near to minimal water size, and initial gameplay difficulty, with 2 obstacles that move randomly. The map shows the ship approaching the coast of Mexico. When the ship makes contact with the white dot placed over Mexico, players gain an interaction point and are notified of this with a greetings
message displaying “Hola!”.

Second setup shows medium camera zoom, 4 obstacles that move randomly, and a medium level of water particle size. The map shows the ship approaching the coast of Greece. When the ship makes contact with the white dot placed over Greece, players gain an interaction point and are notified of this with a greetings message displaying “χαίρετε!”.

Third setup shows maximum camera zoom, highest difficulty with 6 obstacles that move randomly, and the maximum level of water particle size. The map shows the ship crashing into an obstacle. Whenever the ship collides with an obstacle or the mainland, the “Abandon Ship!” message is displayed and players lose one of their 3 available lives. Whenever players lose more than three lives the game resets.