Here I am, it’s later and now I’m talking about the project that I am using to procrastinate learn how to make cutscenes and dialogue to be able to finish my first game project.

A lot of my previous work has been looking to the future with a bit of a dystopian perspective, just because that’s what’s seemed to be the most likely outcomes to the things I’ve been paying attention to. In my work with diasporic futurisms we’ve always been focused on a more optimistic and hopeful outlook to the future, so for this next project I thought I’d try to be a bit more optimistic. This is where I started anyway but the horrors crept in nonetheless. DEEP SLEEP is a VR interactive film (sort of like a choose your own adventure) where you are playing as your future self in a world where humans have come to terms with the fact that the environment is ruined beyond human intervention (see? optimistic, right?).

This work started as a 360 video installation that was initially installed at InterAccess in 2023.

In this timeline, stasis has been developed as a stable technology to keep humanity in hibernation where people have the option of waiting in orbit (the first version had the stasis pods buried in the earth) for the earth to heal on its own without human activity or intervention to slow the earth’s natural process of change, or being sent to another habitable planet and starting fresh.

What I have so far:

• working demo of the conversation/choose your own adventure aspect of the game
• Set pieces/background for first section of gameplay
• conversation tree & scored quiz
• Title/intro sequence & main menu

What I need to do:

• re-texture the pod-environment
• animate cutscene for introduction
• animate cutscenes for choose your own adventure film
• code how to put together the custom sequence of cutscenes based on player choices.
• re-edit and finish the script – it feels a bit robotic now which is not necessarily bad, but if I want to make people cry it should probably be more poetic.

My timeline for this project is to be completely done by the end of 2025, with the game play finalized by the end of the summer (HOPEFULLY!!!).

Cutscenes:

I need to return to this blog post and actually learn how to make a cutscene in Unity Creating a Cutscene in Unity. When creating cutscenes, there are two… | by Kyle W. Powers

I saw some animation tools in the Unity Asset Store but I am going to see if I can just use the built in tools. I love animating in blender so much, if this doesn’t work I’ll just make stereo VR video clips in blender, but I think for consistency It would be better to make the cutscenes in game so theoretically I could return to the game and up-res it in the future when VR technology is even more advanced (if that happens lol).

I will update more when there is more to say, if you have a VR headset and you’re interested in being a beta-tester for the game please contact me through my website.