Transmogrifier

Inspiration

Transmogrifier, a device in the Calvin and Hobbes universe that transforms its users into any desired creature.

By immersing players in the virtual bodies of non-humanoid avatars, the game aims to challenge anthropocentric viewpoints and encourage a deeper appreciation for the diversity of life forms on Earth.

What it does

An action game featuring these non-humanoid avatars, emulating physics skills including crawling, vision attributes and superhuman abilities including colorblind, echolocation and motion-sensitivity.

The core of the gameplay lies in the power of the transmogrifier. Players can turn into other creatures, observe from their perspectives, and discover the advantages of their superhuman abilities.

How we built it

After having the concept, we went through the stage of non-humanoid avatar selection, superhuman ability selection, puzzle ideation, etc, and finally had the idea to choose animals that are not considered "cute" and made everything a bit creepy.

To create the illusion of body ownership, we considered visuotactile and visuomotor cues, including perspective, playing posture, avatar appearance, body alignment, and realism.

The "fun part" of the game is to move around and observe through the different bodies and try out things that you cannot do as a human. Hence we spent a lot of time on locomotion and movement design, taking things like varied skin stickiness and extra body parts into consideration.

After we finished the avatar design, we put them into one large scene, the dungeon, and added puzzles based on different features of the animals and linked everything together.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We designed and implemented physics-based locomotion including crawling, jumping, and flapping while simulating different body weights and sizes. We also simulated the movement of extra body parts through inverse kinematics and procedural animation.