Theme: Entanglement

Quantum research. Fungal communication. Two worlds becoming one.

The Story

Woken by an alarming call in the early morning, lead quantum researcher Jacinda Portobello is pulled from her sleep.

She already fears that her research involving quantum entanglement and fungal communication networks has gone horribly wrong.

When she arrives, the building appears abandoned. Spores drift through the corridors, organic growth is spreading across the laboratory, and something has awakened inside.

She must reach the secure laboratory and stop it before the mycelium escapes the facility and spreads into the outside world.

Controls

Jam Prototype Notice

This was created during KiwiJam by a newly formed five-person team. Late in development, our sole programmer was unable to continue, leaving the remaining team to recover and assemble a playable build from the existing Unity project.

The submitted version is incomplete and contains technical and presentation issues, but we chose to share it as a record of the project, the collaboration and the ideas we developed during the jam.

Team

Rico — Game design, level design

Heather — Art, game design

Seong — Sound effects, code

Jacob — Code, level design

Ken — Testing, code, level design

The Intended Game Loop

The player would enter the facility, notice the increasing spores, locate a respirator, pass through the security and office areas, and discover that the mushroom monster—an infected security guard—has escaped.

Progression involved environmental interactions such as opening security doors, breaking glass and activating a sprinkler system to extinguish a fire.

The player would then reach the secure quantum laboratory and recover the central experiment while being pursued by the creature.

A later section was planned to reveal a mirrored fungal world beneath the laboratory, visually representing the entanglement between the two realities. The player would gradually develop abilities allowing them to shift between both worlds.

Concepts and Development

On the side bar you can see some of the character animation tests, creature artwork, environmental concepts and level-planning work created by the team during the jam.

Despite the incomplete build, KiwiJam gave us the chance to form a team, combine very different creative disciplines and develop a setting we would not have reached individually.

We are sharing both the prototype and its development material because the concepts, artwork, music and lessons were valuable even where the implementation fell short.

Thanks for taking a look at what we created.