Playhear: Square Paper City

How an Electronic Music Album would sound and look if it was a Video Game?

Welcome to a new way to listen to music with this first opus of Playhear, a series of musical pieces made into games!

Surreal City

Settled in a weird and minimalistic place, you’ll experienced otherworldly visuals and sonic sensations. Square Paper City is a Walking Simulator with mazes, some puzzles and a bouncy and dynamic world.

A new way to play a music album

This interactive experience will make you live and feel a music LP as something new: semi-procedural, designed according to the game and the levels, moving and modulating according to your actions.
Square Paper City is a short game with an abstract story and light gameplay.

Made with experimentations in mind

I made this game alone, following my emotions and knowledge, testing visual technologies and working closely with some audio plugin developers as a tester and sound designer.
This game is a tribute to them (Unfiltered Audio, Rhizomatic, UVI, Bitwig, Sugar Bytes...) and to experimenters.






Finally, here's the Playhear

Manifesto

• Push the boundaries of the way we play/listen to music: a technical and artistic approach to interactive music
• Automatic Writing and Development: a surreal way of composing the narrative and the content of the game
• Minimalistic gameplay: give more space for contemplation of abstract visuals and even more attention to the musical and sonic elements of the game, that are the main focus of the project
• Serendipity: attempt to make a world that lives according to the music
• Focus on experimental art and trippy mood: I wish to experiment on both the technical art and the interactive music system in order to push the boundaries of abstract and artistic games
• Diversity in electronic music genres: as I always done in my musical career
• This game is an instrument as much as it is an art piece: give the opportunity to the player to play the game as an album or live show during a party or whatever.
• Use a limited range of Virtual Instruments: especially those that I'm testing for audio developers friends and a few others that I really need for the overall quality of the music

A game made by Tomavatars.