About this project
Pulse - Reveal the world through sound
$80,977
2,129
THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH
Missed the campaign? HAVE NO FEAR! You can still follow our progress and donate on our website. <3
www.teampixelpi.com
Available for WINDOWS, MAC and LINUX
Pulse is a first-person experiential journey in which you are blind. Using a process similar to echolocation, you use sounds in the environment to create a mental reconstruction of the world around you. The character has not been blind since birth, and is therefore able to pull memories from their childhood to "see" the environment.
Throughout your journey, you will encounter creatures called Mokos whose sole desire is to help you. By using the noise these creatures make, they provide additional "vision" when in need. They also provide superfluous amounts of cuteness. In contrast, there are also terrifying creatures who seek to devour you. Listen carefully and avoid these beasts at all costs.
In this synesthesia-like experience, your world will shift and become clearer based on the information provided by your senses. There is often a distinct difference between what you "see" versus what is actually there. Let your senses guide you.
For the prototype of Pulse, we focused on three main design pillars:
Challenge - We believe challenge and difficulty are two very different beasts, and they do not necessarily exist hand in hand. We want to engage players, not test them. There are amazing things to be said about completing a difficult game, but Pulse isn’t about proving you can make it to the end; it’s about feeling like you accomplished something worthwhile in getting there.
Discovery - We've dropped the player in the world with little to no information about their surroundings. Since vision is not readily available to the player they must rely on their other senses to piece together what they’re seeing. We are able to create “layers of discovery” on objects or entire environments, which makes the world constantly change based on your new level of understanding.
Sensation - Limiting the information players have traditionally relied on gave us the opportunity to give them a different way to experience their environment. Though we never intended to recreate the experience of being blind we invite the player to imagine what it would mean to rely on their other senses for information and guidance.
We are five game designers and developers from a multitude of backgrounds, ranging from Brazil, to the United States, to all over Canada, eh? We bring to the table years of experience in Fine Arts, Design and Computer Sciences, with degrees in all three subjects.
After completing these degrees and working in our respective fields for some time, we all moved to the west coast to study in the Vancouver Film School Game Design program. This is where we met, formed our team, and went on to develop our final student project: Pulse.
Now that we've graduated and moved into the games industry, we want nothing more than to reunite the team with our refined skills and embark on another game development adventure together.
When we started Pulse as a student project, we set out to challenge ourselves. We wanted to bring to the table a special kind of gaming experience; one that was more than just fun, one that was emotionally engaging. We still have that same goal: exploring beyond the fun in games, and seeing how they're capable of affecting players in different ways.
The response to it has been overwhelming. We've had the opportunity to watch others discover the world through our characters eyes. As a student project we took this concept as far as we could, but there is so much more to explore - We want to take our prototype to the next level.
Independent game development has come a long way since the birth of video games -- in large part due to the recent involvement of Kickstarter. It has been an incredibly positive force in allowing creativity to flow from “the little guy”, and get it into the hands of players around the world.
Individually, we’ve all backed numerous projects on Kickstarter, and we’ve seen the amazing results. Now we're on the other end of that. We can deliver, we just need a bit of help.
By backing us, you're helping us overcome the upfront costs for development. Specifically:
Purchasing the software licenses - Our prototype was created using educational software licences that were made available to us through our school. We need to purchase professional licences to move forward with the project.
Game audio, studio recording and soundtrack - While at VFS we had access to an amazing sound team and recording studio. To maintain the quality level we were able to achieve in the prototype we will need access to these facilities and in the real world they don't come cheap.
Legal junk - We need to get the usual legal stuff out of the way so that we are protected and can focus on the game.
Your rewards for being awesome!
An ice cream machine*
*Note: we're not actually buying an ice cream machine.
Incredible amounts of THANK YOU for taking the time to check out our project!
Music used in video: Revert by Rataxes under the CC Attribution license.
Team Pixel Pi is participating in Brian Fargo's Kicking it Forward program. This means that 5% of the profit from our projects will go towards pledging and supporting other Kickstarter projects.
Risks and challenges
We aren't relying on this project turning a profit and enabling us to quit our jobs, run off into the sunset and buy that ice cream machine. It is a labour of love - we will be working on it in our time after work and on weekends.
Luckily we have a great team and a extremely supportive network of amazing Vancouver game developers. We're confident that although our backers may need to be patient they will not regret supporting us.
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Funding period
- (35 days)