Boxing with Aries

Boxing with Aries is an immersive experience in Unity that invites players to a dark and eerie world where they will have to navigate through their internal conflict of peace and war, of hope and sorrow.

Nhi Pham Le Yen, Neyva Hernandez, Vince Nguyen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zgEZgupZCw

Description

Boxing with Aries welcomes the player with an inviting big red punching bag placed in the center of a gloom, obscure, and desolate ground that is actively contrast by a sky filled with grids of smaller punching bags seemingly blending with bloody clouds streaks: what could go wrong, what other ominous thing that could happen here?

Unknowingly to the players, dozens of doves fly out from the punching bag whenever it is punched. That is simply not how punching a bag works in real life. The act of punching something is supposed to be a violent act: how could this make sense with such a symbol of peace, how could such two antipodes co-exist in the same world, let alone in the same interaction. Taken back by the unexpected interactions, the players then face their internal struggle of interpreting such encounters: whether to keep punching or to stop the violent act, whether to spread peace by setting the doves free or to let hope die out by chasing the doves away…

The project comprised of five main components:
– The player, a.k.a the boxer (with colliders and animation scripts)
– The big punching bag (with colliders and scripts to generate doves)
– The doves and their associated animation (random speed, random direction…)
– The grid of smaller punching bags
– The environment (diffused ground, red streaks of clouds, and particle system volumetric fog)

IM Abu Dhabi
IM-UH.3311
Alternate Realities
VR/AR