Submissions
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Known Mysteries
Known Mysteries
by Kara Stone
Known Mysteries
by Kara Stone
Country:
Canada
Genre:
Narrative, Mystery
Platform:
Web
Links:
Known Mysteries is a narrative mystery game told through video and text. Set in a near-future Canada that has resigned itself to the full death of the earth, the player follows a woman named Sorrow who sets out to uncover why her parents' deaths are connected to the oil-turned-tech company that controls much of the country. The game is designed to be low-carbon, using an aesthetics of compression and low-energy design techniques in order to keep the carbon footprint of the game as small as possible. It is hosted on Solar Server, an autonomous solar-powered webserver on my apartment balcony. My goal with this project is to not only represent environmentalist themes and have people think about the future of the planet and what needs to change, but also put principles of sustainability into actual practice. Because I am an artist I want people to see and interact with my work, yet my previous work demands you interact with fossil fuels in order to engage with it— on Steam’s servers, Apple’s, Androids, and itch.io’s. Accessing Solar Server, consuming fossil fuels is no longer a necessity when playing my work. The set up is a 120Watt solar panel I bought off Kijiji, a marine deep cycle sealed lead-acid battery, also used from Kijiji, an MPPT charge controller, and a Rasperry Pi, a form of microcomputer.