A downloadable tech demo

“What’s in there?” “Only what you take with you.” Even I, the developer, do not know what you will find in this maze of passageways and obstacles. Every journey is randomly generated based on responses to a few questions. There are no traps or deadly things to harm you, but there are many objects that may stir up memories from your past. Some paths are bright and airy, some are dark and foreboding. So go forth, get lost, and be prepared to face whatever your mind dredges up as you experience a new kind of moving meditation.

Version 1.0 includes 34 unique artifacts, and the game keeps track of which ones the player has found.  The on-screen display shows the number of artifacts collected in the current journey, as well as the number of unique artifacts collected across all journeys.  Each journey includes 11 randomly placed (and randomly selected) artifacts, so it will require quite a few journeys to collect them all.

If enough people like this idea, then I am hoping to add a museum to view all the artifacts the player has collected, along with many more artifacts to collect.  I also have several more ideas for different journey themes that I would like to implement.

This Tech Demo focuses on procedurally generated worlds and music that are influenced by player choices, and also on a multi-level menu system.  It took about 35 hours to create (October - November 2022), and is meant to serve as a proof-of-concept for a VR game I am making, but my beta testers thought it was rather fun.

Download

Download
DansMeditativeJourneys_v1.0_Windows.zip 119 MB

Install instructions

Unarchive the zip file and launch "Dan's Meditative Journeys.exe".  Tested on Windows 10 and Windows 11.  From the main menu, there are two graphics options: Low will disable fog and will generate smaller worlds (useful if the frame rate is too low with the default High setting).  

Be sure to experiment with different choices when starting a new journey, they really do impact the world that is generated!  Try to collect all the artifacts; the 'Total Unique' count is saved across journeys (and across play sessions with a save file on disk).  During play testing, it took about 2 hours (and many journeys) to collect all 34 artifacts from v1.0.

From the Pause menu (esc key), the "Regenerate Journey" button will randomize the level, but will not re-randomize the artifacts.

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.