This project was created as part of my master’s thesis and examines the narrative potential of worldbuilding and environmental storytelling in gaming. The goal was to craft a player experience that relies on indirect storytelling, giving players the space to develop their own interpretations. The focus was on building a world that tells its story through environmental details, sparking critical reflection on demographic and societal challenges. 0.8 is an interactive reflection on the future, inviting players to engage deeply with the consequences of an aging society and dropping birth rates.
The project is handling a very sensitive yet interesting topic, that has fascinated me for a long time.
0.8 is an atmospheric walking simulator set in a dystopian South Korea, exploring the social impact of an extremely low birth rate. Players move through an almost deserted city, discovering traces of decay and unresolved social tensions. Without setting an explicit objective, the game encourages players to decipher and interpret fragments of this speculative future independently.
The Story
We play as SeoHee a 67 year old woman who has lived and witnessed the impact of a world wide low fertility rate of below 1. Through her eyes we wander the street she lives on and can explore the surrounding in the early morning hours. She is a strong and determined woman who has made it her life goal to develop a strategy to preserve humanity. Some people might think her work is immoral, others support her great mind. A conflict that has been going on for a long time. Through clues on the street the players get a sense of what has happened in the past years since the "Vanishing" the period of time the population shrunk drastically.
The game functions as a prototype and only focuses on a small scene in the story.
It was made to serve the theoretical part of the master thesis.
The game functions as a prototype and only focuses on a small scene in the story.
It was made to serve the theoretical part of the master thesis.
Assets
I designed assets that reflect two sides in the futuristic society: The side of the government that was willing to go all the way to push the population rate up versus the people that were highly criticizing the ideas of artificial babies and birth farms.
All assets were meant to give an insight into the fictional depiction of our future worlds problematic situation and tell its story to the players. While designing the posters and artifacts I took inspiration from already existing pronatalist campaigns to show that the scary far future is much closer than we expect and already reality in some countries.
Trailer & Making Off
game intro
Roles: Worldbuilding, Concept, Research, Game development, Writing, UI/UX, 2D Animation, 3D Modelling
Under supervision of Prof. Jonas Hansen (Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design)