Diluvium

03.12.2024 we used to visit schiermonnikoog.

Long time no see, life events hit like a wall of bricks during November so my mind has been everywhere except for this project.
I want to slowly pick things up from where I left off again, which was the research/inspiration trip I mentioned in the first log entry.
Max, Dion and I traveled to the Frisian island Schiermonnikoog at the end of October and stayed there for 5 days.

On the first day, Jort's grandpa took us to the island's bird ringing station. (who have a really awesome old-school website that still gets updated!)
Jort's grandpa traded one of the older scientists a few fish he'd caught himself, in return he gave us a tour of the nets they catch birds in and explained their process. I even got to hold a bag with a bird inside (really tightly because I was so scared I'd drop it). They get really chill once they're inside the bag because it's dark in there! But it would still flutter around sometimes. We watched two scientists log and ring birds while talking with the other scientists.

What stuck with me most, both from talking to the scientists and Jort's grandpa, was how in tune they all were with the island and it's constant changes. An awareness you can only gain from being very present within the ecosystem you inhabit.
The islanders asked us multiple times to guess bird names, and were surprised we were so interested in nature but couldn't name any of them. We were just never taught to pay attention like that, I think. But we can still learn to be more present in our own ecosystems. I want to.

The days after were mostly spent exploring the island by bike! We visited the cemetary where soldiers that washed up on the island's shores during both world wars were buried. There were these really beautiful trees there that had white leaves, I had never seen anything like it before.
On the path down to the cemetary we also saw some really cool mushrooms, the biggest ones I'd seen anywhere on the island. It felt very fitting that they were in such close proximity to the cemetary.

We took an evening walk on one of the last days. I think we were trying to see the supermoon, but it was really foggy so we couldn't see anything in the sky.
But ohhh my god it was so worth it still. We walked all the way to the beach, past the lighthouse, and the lighthouse in the foggy dark was BREATHTAKING to see. None of the photos we took do it justice, it was beautiful and eery and mesmerizing. I still really need to paint it. On our way back from the beach we even saw the lighthouse keeper leave to go home, and he looked exactly like you'd expect a lighthouse keeper to look like. I was a little starstruck.

One conversation that's really stuck with me, was Jort's grandma mentioning that maybe one day, we will be old and telling stories about what visiting the island was like, because it won't be possible anymore. It was strange to think about the land I was standing on getting swallowed by the ocean over time.
It's still difficult to tell what effect the rising sea level and changing climate will have, and how the island will adapt to it.
Or if one day it will all be claimed by the sea.

07.10.2024 emergence.

Research time! Started reading Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway, which has been sitting unread in my bookcase for a year. I felt it calling my name now that Diluvium is floating around in my head a lot, as it thematically fits very well together.

"Staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful and edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings."

I haven't read much of it yet as Haraway's writing style takes some effort to untangle (which I think is beautiful! It's like academic poetry) but the book's introduction guided me to Ursula K. Le Guin's The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. I highly recommend reading the essay for yourself.
In it, Le Guin says that the tool of the weapon is deemed most important in fiction. Our narratives are driven by conflict. It's one of the first things most writers are taught.
Le Guin finds this absurd, and proposes a different tool to center our stories around: a container, a bag, a bottle, a medicine bundle.
"A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us."

Most game designs and narratives centralize conflict and weapons as well. I want to reject this status quo of narrative design as the hero/killer story. I think games have a lot to offer as a medium because of their unique nonlinear storytelling and emergent gameplay and narrative.

Wikipedia describes emergence as occuring when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when they interact in a wider whole.
This immediately reminded me of Donna Haraway's description of making oddkin: requiring each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations.

I don't really have a conclusion to any of this yet because I'm just connecting some interesting dots and taking you along on the journey. But I am really interested in maybe taking the carrier bag theory quite literally in Diluvium's game mechanics. Instead of a weapon being the most important tool like in most games, I'd like our player character to be a gatherer of some kind.

25.09.2024 new beginnings.

Diluvium started during my second year of university as a puzzle adventure game my friends and I made in 8 weeks. At the time, I felt a desire to envision a hopeful future set in a world completely altered by climate change. Diluvium 1.0 takes place on a floating island built by humans after a dramatic rise in sea level flooded the original land their ancestors lived on.
Over 2 years later, I spent a majority of that time working on projects set in much more dystopian worlds and futures. Now that I've graduated, I'm feeling that itch again to work on something that gives me hope, even in the face of rising crises around the globe.

This summer my friends and I visited one of the Frisian islands north of the Netherlands. The background photo was taken there by me! My goal is to build a world that evokes the same sense of community, history, and peacefulness that I experienced there. Max and I are planning on returning to that island for another week soon, to gather more inspiration and soak up more of that energy that inspires us, especially now autumn is fast approaching.

Starting a new project now that I don't have any school or work obligations has been a rough process. I struggle to find the self discipline in me to work on it, especially as my life has been so chaotic outside of creative work. It was nice to take the summer off though, I feel way more recharged.
It feels very freeing that this project is not connected to my schoolwork in any way.. everything I did for art school always felt like I couldn't fully take myself seriously as a creative, as I was "still just a student". This feels like the beginning of a new chapter, one which I can define completely myself.

So far this log entry feels so formal.. I'd like to loosen up a little more in the future. I'm excited to take you along on this journey! Can't wait to see how this page will evolve along with the project.

to do:

• Gather inspiration & research on Miro board
• Brainstorm characters & locations