Eden
EDEN is a pervasive team game, set inside the castle of San Marino in a dystopian future scenario.
Client
UNIRSM
Year
2019
Type
Game Design
CONTEXT
Understanding how human environmental behavior shapes our lives and impacts future generations can be challenging.
The project's ambition is to bring players to contemplate this by immersing them in a scenario where Earth's vegetation is nearly eradicated in the name of human progress.
Players assume the role of explorers who will challenge each other to be the first to save the green, without ever thinking that they can join forces for what is basically a common good.
CONCEPT
EDEN is a pervasive game set in a dystopian future scenario, where each team has the objective of collecting more "Nature Trails" than the opposing team, and in the meantime trying to deviously slow it down by using traps and deleting, by hacking into the opponent's laboratory, all the data collected so far.
DESIGN PROCESS
The game mechanics lead players to use a number of strategies to manage the resources found on the battlefield.
As far as virus-resources are concerned: since they are few in number, players are encouraged to make the best use of them, e.g. by first trying to figure out the position of the opponents (it is not useful to use a trap knowing that the opponents are close to one's own base).
Similarly, it has been seen, in various play-tests, that traps tend to be activated in positions that force the opponent to walk over them (closing a road, surrounding it, placing them near a resource still on the map). This also prevents more athletic players from being privileged.
Finally, the option of seeing one's partner's position on the map creates a kind of 'lateral' communication between players who move precisely in relation to this information.
