Lost Elements

...the four fundamental elements couldn’t be controlled. Water, sun, wind, and earth unleashed upon the world, devastating everything in their path. Though all those elements were essential for our planet to sustain any life, it is said that an entity named Anjä was born in the depths of the Earth. She had the daunting task of containing the elements in an ancient relic and becoming its guardian.

Century by century, nature finally calmed down. So Anjä slowly disappeared, conscientiously/carefully leaving the relic hidden inside a temple. But she hadn’t planned on humankind appearing… and stealing the relic for their own purposes.

Climatic phenomenons that we see today and issues caused by them are complex and the links between one another can feel invisible. And although a meaningful pourcentage of the population is worried about global warming, many basic knowledge and notions about that subject are still quite hard to grasp. That’s why, for that project at Gobelins, we focused on the best way to explain, in a playful way, current climatic and environmental issues and what’s at stake.

Lost Elements is a puzzle game with a connected object that will carry you to an oneiric world not so far from present realities.

In order for the player to understand climate imbalance, he/she will have to gather all four elements to learn how to use them properly to solve every puzzles the levels hold.

The game consists of a tutorial and four chapters (one per element) in which are contained a predetermined amount of levels.

Our wish to have an object to handle the elements is crucial: that object is the link between an intangible concept with a physical dimension, a real dimension, that has a clear impact when I use it (that being a comparison with the real world and the consequences our actions can have, which can feel blurry, or far away).

The game was entirely made on Unity. It’s connected to the object and its Photon Particle (Arduino-like) in wi-fi and detects the selected element thanks to four hall effect sensors and a magnet, as well as a potentiometer to adjust the intensity of the element currently being used.