Yu-Ren

Antarctic Survival: https://yuren1027gmailcom.itch.io/antarctic

Controls: A and D to move left and right respectively. Left Shift to slide to gain speed, and Space to jump.

Game Genre: 2D platformer

Artist Statement:

My project is a 2D platformer named Antarctic Survival, where the player navigates a parent penguin and its offspring through a series of obstacles. The game was loosely inspired by documentaries I’ve watched regarding penguin survival, and the idea was conceived upon skiing. The levels are designed around testaments to parenthood, where the player can choose to opt to give up the baby penguin and the game is relatively easy. Certain levels require the player to put the parent in potential danger to secure the baby. Even when the two penguins are parted, the player needs to pay attention to the baby to avoid obstacles. As I am unexperienced with game programming and unity, much of the game is unfurnished in the sense of resets and winning. The game comments on the harsh natural environment and the cruelty of survival, as well as the difficulties of parenthood. As I’ve mentioned, I’m not proficient with unity, and I decided to put in more work into the level design to explore the topics I set out to incorporate and comment on in my game. While I personally have not been a parent, I’ve grown up as an offspring to wonderful parents that I know would do anything for me, and I am forever grateful for their love. I tried to tie the affordances of my game to conscience decisions players have to make as the parent penguin.

My intervention was centered around the exploration of how products in the modern day are manufactured all across the world, and the process is very simple. In whatever room and with whatever amount of people, I ask the group of people to present however many items they have that are made in different countries, and I document the number of items. This intervention is vastly inspired by the class with the boxes, but I thought as to do something with what we carry everyday instead of asking people to specifically do something. I think this intervention is intriguing in that it calls on the participants to not just learn more about the global village, but to also think about specific memories they have with purchasing the item.

I attempted this intervention three times, once with myself, once with my roommates, and once in class. Alone, I documented 7 countries. With my roommates,  I documented 10. Finally, in class we documented 17. The final result in class was vastly different than what I expected. As the change between myself and my 3 roommates only differed by three, I expected the class to have a number much closer to 10. I had this expectation knowing most of the world’s products are manufactured by a few selected countries such as China and Vietnam. However, the class presented a great number of items from countries I didn’t expect to be included, some of which I knew way to little about to spell out. This surprised me because I wouldn’t even know if some of my belongings are manufactured in these countries.

While I, an international student from Taiwan, expected my intervention to open the eyes of my participants to things they don’t think about in this global village, it seemed to have opened my own eyes more than I anticipated.