Dabbling At… WASD 2023, 4

The final episode of a short series on games I discovered at WASD 2023.

Viewfinder

Oh come on. Four Viewfinder demos just isn’t enough. When am I going to get my turn? Aha! Shortly before WASD closes for the day. Ten minutes should be long enough.

Viewfinder appears to be based in a full-body VR simulation and there are post-it notes and audio logs scattered everywhere. But what you’re really here for is the fun photograph stuff – where you can convert a photo into a 3D environment.

At first, Viewfinder will just offer you photographs the developers made earlier. You use them to solve puzzles and, sometimes, go on flights of fancy like exploring a drawing. The demo was comprised of islands that you teleport between, so it’s not an open-world a la The Witness, but a more traditional puzzle structure. Finish one puzzle and move onto the next. And the next. And the next.

But then Viewfinder hands you a camera and tells you to have a good time. It’s incredible. Seeing a photograph you just took become space is spectacular. There are no adornments to the process; one moment photo, next moment space.

How does this magic game technology work? The camera is actually a copy-and-paste device: it copies a chunk of the environment and allows you to paste anywhere you like. It sounds simple but I am in awe at how polished the Viewfinder implementation is. It’s just so good.

And if you want to know what happens after that, the security guard taps you on the shoulder and tells you it’s time to leave the building, sir. Please don’t loiter.

Viewfinder is scheduled for release this year.

Secret Shuffle

We had just finished eating some lunch from the Moroccan food stand and were preparing to rejoin the videogames. But we were standing by Secret Shuffle. And I knew, out of the corner of my eye, the man looking after Secret Shuffle was actually looking at us. Hungry for an opening.

He pounced. Asked if we were a family. He asked us to try out his game. A game about dancing. I’m an overweight man in the final ten days of his forties.

I don’t think I can do this. But I’m also a Dad. I don’t want my daughter staring into my eyes thinking that I’m embarassed to dance. Dancing is not shameful. Dancing is life. Life is to be lived with pride not hidden away in shame. I swallowed my hard-edged reservations.

Secret Shuffle is a mobile game so every player must have a mobile with a pair of headphones or earbuds. In each game mode, Secret Shuffle sends music to the players, but not neccesarily the same music. In the Split mode, you have to find out who is listening to the same music as you by observing their dancing. In the Faker mode, you have to figure out which player isn’t listening to music at all, by observing their dancing.

And the Faker mode is terrifying if you’re the Faker because you hear silence. Just like when I’m at a party and everyone is having a good time, making smalltalk, being funny, having a laugh. I have to fake it. I have to pretend to be chatty and witty and as knowledgeable. Everyone looks so natural but I’m screaming inside. Maybe they’ll discover my dark secret that I’m the big faker, that I have no words for them at all. The torture is unending—

The main problem with Secret Shuffle is it will only support a maximum of 60 players. If you’ve got 61 people at your birthday party, that is going to be one sad birthday party for one person. They’ll be faking it all evening.

Anyway, Secret Shuffle is a good time, even if you can’t dance. Even though I was dancing with my children in full view of everyone eating their lunch and about 50 people attending a talk at the WASD Careers Stage. Was Secret Shuffle actually my Secret Shame?

Secret Shuffle was released last year.

Full Void

It’s more likely that I don’t choose games at an expo; they choose me. A chair is empty and I take it. After all, life isn’t meant to be spent in a queue for the System Shock remake. Sometimes these random seats plug me into a game that drains my will to live. Oh, it’s an idle game. Please kill me. (Apologies to the people who love idle games.)

But other times the random seat delivers revelation. In fact, I wasn’t taking the seat for myself but trying to reserve it for my son who was having trouble finding something engaging. So at the back of the smaller of the two Hands On sections, I found myself sitting at Full Void while trying to ignore a woman’s frequent screams escaping from the Sony VR demonstration.

Full Void was a game in the mould of Eric Chahi’s Another World. There was no dialogue and I assume it would continue in this vein for the rest of the game. You were thrown into the middle of the story, in control of a character who I think was on the run. Something was not right with the world and death seemed to wait at every corner. It also made me jump.

The animation is as good as you’d expect with atmosphere oozing from the backdrops. I climbed up ladders, scrambled across rooftops, leapt across sheer drops. At one point, the protagonist slipped into an old memory which was a lovely touch, showing the stark difference between then and now. Full Void was engrossing and there was something undeniably nostalgic about it. Wham. On to the wishlist it goes.

Full Void is not currently scheduled for release.