I created Reflect as an expression of something I felt was wrong with my life. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t feel the wonder I felt during special moments in nature, or office parks (an eccentricity of mine), all of the time. When one is busy, they rarely pay attention to the spatial reality around them, and when nothing was going on we fill our heads with thoughts of pending tasks and other people and places. I wanted to create something that would try to do something about this. Inspired by my experiences with PilotWings 64, I created Reflect have the player slow down, and look around while still performing tasks. In the game, the player looks through the perspective of various animals and attempts to mimic their movements.
If I were to recreate Reflect again there are many things I would do differently (mostly pertaining to interface and pacing), but overall I am happy with how it turned out. However, I still can’t get its themes out of my head. I’m not done with them.
Two years ago I started work on a new project born from the same ideas. Pieces of my Life is a game about the time we spend in bathroom stalls. Mechanically, it is far simpler than Reflect. The player’s main task is to let somewhere between one and three minutes pass. The game is set in various low-res 3D bathrooms, and the player has the limited ability to look around and observe people through the cracks between stalls, listen to the sounds, read graffiti and much more. A small diary entry precedes each level.
Sadly, the realities of the path I have chosen for myself have slowed progress on this project to a halt. I just thought I’d say something about a project I’ve been thinking about almost everyday for two years.
