LevelHead - A Cool 3D Spatial Game
Friends and adepts of the sci-fi movie / gutsy thriller The Cube (not the sequel because it sucked). Here is a keen futuristic looking concept game that seems to be based on the idea behind the cult movie. Although it’s not as big as the installation in the movie itself and it doesn’t count as many rooms, it’s still worth checking out. The idea is really nicely worked out, and the experience is deliverd in a pretty polished way.
levelHead is a spatial memory game by Julian Oliver, a New Zealand born artist, developer, teacher and occasional writer based in Madrid, Spain who has presented his papers and projects at many international electronic-art events and conferences since 1996.
levelHead uses a hand-held solid-plastic cube as its only interface. On-screen it appears as if each face of the cube contains a little room, each of which are logically connected by doors. In one of these rooms is a character. By tilting the cube the player controls and guides this character from room to room in an effort to find the exit.
Some doors lead nowhere and will send the character back to the room they started in, a trick designed to challenge the player’s spatial memory. Which doors belong to which rooms?
There are three cubes (levels) in total, each of which are connected by a single door. Players have the goal of moving the character from room to room, cube to cube in an attempt to find the final exit door of all three cubes. If this door is found the character will appear to leave the cube, walk across the table surface and vanish.. The game then begins again.
The game is currently considered stable, having been played by thousands of humans with vastly different brains and ways of handling the cubes. There is a source-code release intended for those willing to try to compile it and/or submit patches. As yet there is no binary executable available. In the meantime, levelHead is playable as an installation, appearing in several electronic arts events in 2008. Once levelHead is more easily installable, it is intended to be released with all levels as paper cut-outs so people can print the levels onto stiff paper, cut and fold them up to play. (some sort of DIY art)