Isolation

**Keep the man alive for 2 minutes to experience the quarantine scenario**

What is Isolation?

“Isolation” is a game about experiences of how quarantine has affected university students and other people who had to work at home. During the Covid-19 pandemic people were forced to stay at home and only go out for essential matters, which means people had to self-isolate and be aware of keeping social distance. From research, we gathered that as a result of self-isolation, a disruption in daily routines occurred e.g. sleep patterns have changed and people feel unmotivated to do work or uphold one’s own basic needs. This disruption is caused by forced changes in their daily lives, as the students must adjust their work environments and habits. The usual structure of a day with classes and group work is gone and the student must find new sources and means of motivation, even when the routines are drifting apart. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The gameplay is as follows:

• Control your avatar in the worlds of "Isolation" - Use the arrow keys or A and D keys for control and the "F" key to interact with objects
• Keep your health meters up by following basic needs (Eat, Socialize, Sleep)
• Perform activities withing the schedule and get more health points 
• Watch how the quarantine affects the ability to keep the meters up 
• Stay alive for as long as possible! 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What does the players say?

• Easy to understand the gameplay 
• Difficulty is high --> challenging 
• Very relatable to pandemic life 
• Nice visual and sound effects 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Game Design

The context of the game is about the experiences of how the covid-19 pandemic has affected university students and other people who had to work from home due to quarantine. The story of Isolation is that you control a character who has certain routines and things he does, this is set pre-quarantine. As quarantine begins the character is more depressed and has no motivation, so it is up to the player to help him keep his routines! As mentioned, the game takes place is two game spaces, pre- and during quarantine. One is lively, colorful and bright, the other is dark and cold and the room is messy. The goal is creating a sharp contrast between these two spaces to let the player know that it is not pleasant to experience this. The game is meant to affect the player experience, as they might have experienced something similar - losing control, disrupted routines, isolation etc. due to quarantine. Which creates immersion (Callois, 2005), as the player will immerse themselves into the story. Although the player is given agency (Mateas & Stern, 2005), control of the character, they will still feel the uncontrollable aspect through atmosphere of the room. It becomes harder for the player to maintain the characters needs which is the challenge aspect of agôn (Callois, 2005), because the player must battle the characters mental state in order to survive. 

The platform; the game is to be played on is a computer. We created the game in Unity game engine by drawing the different objects in Procreate on an iPad and later transferring them to the game  engine. The mechanics are simple - the player controls the character with A and D keys or left and right arrow keys, and interaction key is F. The rules are that the player has to keep up the quality meters of the character otherwise the game ends.

**Click on the pictures to watch full screen**