SWARM : Orun ReRe

During GLOR1A's FACT together residency on the theme of "Radical Ancestry", we developed a new episode of SWARM, our ongoing video game and live-av project.

It's playable right there, in your desktop web browser :

• http://fact.co.uk/swarm
• http://swarm.nok.baby/play/orun-rere

This was an opportunity for us to expand the world and lore of SWARM, and develop some themes, symbols and game mechanics we want to integrate into the game world.

⚠️ Spoiler warning ⚠️ - Before you read further : if you want to play the game do so before reading further, as we won't reveal the whole game but will describe a lot of it's elements. Feel free to come back to this article afterwards to get more insight in the ideas which went into the project :)

Overall concept

Based on GLOR1A's afro-futurist ideas, we developed a game based on their narrative using North-East and West African folklore and themes related to non-binarity. After a reboot of humanity, the players have to travel to Orun ReRe, which is heaven in Yoruba mythology, and launch a star-probe, a device encoding data from their playthrough and stored into a collective database.

The game is single player, but incorporates collective elements in the form of the star probes and trip reports launched and written by other players.

Playthrough

Gathering ancestral thoughts

First the player travels through the Tomb of Tomorrow : this location in the game is based on the preceding's game episode, and gathers trips reports left by real players at the end of their playthrough. Most of these trip reports have been entered by people who visited the Channel B exhibition at ICA, in London, where the game was shown.

They can choose up to four trip reports to take with them on their journey : this episode of the game is built into a continuity with the preceding one, and this is how the player can carry messages from past players into the future. This selection process represents how we all have to go through choosing which parts of our cultural background we decide to carry, a question which is especially important to queer people to build a more equitable future for ourselves.

• Read the trip reports from the preceding episode : http://trip-reports.nok.baby
• About the preceding episode, the Tomb of Tomorrow : https://swarm.nok.baby/prototype-3

Creating your avatar

After the players are done with this phase, they can create their avatar. But contrary to most avatar-creating systems, the players cannot directly see the output of the creation process, and cannot purposefully design their ideal self. Instead, they have to answer a set of questions using sliders, which will in turn deform and distort a base avatar based on GLOR1A's likeness. At the end of this phase, players can eventually receive an encryption key in which their body is encoded.

• The avatar base model has been created by Harriet Davey
• We used the open-source "queer movement" motion capture library by IOR.50 to animate the avatar dancing :)

Meeting the ancestors

Once player's create their avatar they can enter Orun Rere, where four entities are waiting for them with a set of quests, questions and gifts based on the player's interaction with them.

• ReRe : ReRe is a robot sex worker, living at the South of the garden. Their focus is your body and your sensual well-being, as well as trauma healing. They can give you the Hull to encase your probe.
• Lebe : Lebe is a earth entity, a gigantic serpent dwelling at the West of the garden. They handle death, memories and regrets, and enable rebirth. They can give you some Snake Poison to proceed with the rebirth ritual.
• Bell : Bell is a magic tree growing at the East of the garden. They are an emotional entity, and will expose your emotional being and allow you to encode chosen emotions into a chip which can be used as the Operating System of your probe.
• Genesis : Genesis is an playful entity of transformation governing the mind, appearing at the North of the garden. They will allow you to recombine ancestral thoughts into a Memory Chip you can load into your probe.

By interacting with each entity, the player can get items they can use to build their star probe, and the game calculates in which constellation the star probe will be sent.

Launching star probes

Once all the elements for the probe are gathered, the player can launch it into space. The probes carries different data points :

• Their username and chosen pronoun
• The emotions encoded into their operating system
• A sortcode based on the trip reports they carry
• Their constellation, based on their interactions with the entities
• The configuration data of their avatar
• The remixed trip report they got from Genesis
• Their life regret
• Their ancestor (based on the trip reports carried)
• An item of their choice

All the launched probes can be found here :

• https://observatory.nok.baby

And as to what happens to these probes : this is a story for the next episode ✨

Special thanks

• Zaiba Jabbar and HER VISIONS
• FACT Liverpool
• all the people who played this or other versions of the game <3

Credits

• GLOR1A : writing, music
• alpha_rats : development, graphics, game design
• Harriet Davey : avatar modelling
• IOR50 : motion capture library

Links

• http://swarm.nok.baby
• http://twitch.tv/swarm_world
• SWARM : Orun ReRe on FACT's website