Thinning

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2016-06-27

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States

Subjects

Abstract

This is an exploration of the unique spatial properties of the psychoactive chemical salvinorin A. It is a simulation of curved repetition, loss of time and location, feelings of familiarity, directional movement losing context in space, depersonalization. The gameplay initially looks like that of a standard “rogue-like” game, a 2D procedurally-generated dungeon-crawler. But as one moves through the rooms, instead of encountering monsters to kill, the camera zooms out, showing the same room repeated, with the player character moving in the same patterns through seemingly infinite rooms. These repeating rooms turn into curving patterns, and eventually the player is not focused on controlling their character, but navigating this world turned into patterns through empty space.