Project Overview

Escapism is a 3D environmental simulation of my dream called Kook. It is first person and the player is guided through the map with checkpoints that trigger chronological cutscenes of what happened in my dream. I want this project to fulfill my lifelong goal of being able to bring my dreams to life and let people have a glimpse into my inner world. My project is made using Clip Studio Paint, Blender, Unity, and Visual Studio Code.

The themes represented in the dream I wanted to convey to players is the duality between freedom and surveillance, and some aspects about identity and escapism. Freedom is represented by the pack of wolves, running endlessly across the deserted land, and surveillance is represented by the agents, chasing the wolves down to get to you. Escapism is represented by a giant bird that you come upon near the end of the cutscenes. You try to ride it to escape the agents, but it flies away before you get the chance.

Why

The struggle with identity is the pull between returning to civilization or staying in the wild with the wolves; the opposing forces of wanting to be yourself and wanting to be accepted by society. The giant bird stands for the urge to escape amidst stress and conflict. As is evident, these themes in my dream are engaging and a trope that many artists use for their creations. The relatability of these personal problems allows for many people to understand the ideas my game is trying to portray. Even though it is told through the context of my own dream, the disjunction between something only one person can experience and the commonplace is dissolved through the medium of a video game in order for everyone to experience the same thing differently in their own personal ways.

How

The game takes you through the eyes of a child who has been raised by wolves after being abandoned by his parents. Agents sent by civilization are tasked with bringing you back to society to be raised by people instead of wild animals. The entirety of the game has you running away from the agents, fleeing with the wolves to live a life of your own accord. But, slowly, the wolves are being picked off one by one and you are alone in your fight for freedom. A saying goes: the path you take to discover your true self is a path that only you can take. The journey is a tough and lonely one, and it is up to your own strength to keep going or let it go and accept society’s decision of what you should become in order to fit in with everybody else. This is a unique scenario only experienced by me, so I feel like for a wider audience that would have never had my dream before, I have something to bring to the table that would be a new experience for many people.