Pandemic Portal (2021)

experimental game reflecting on different spaces occupied during the COVID-19 pandemic

objective: create a game to immortalize my pandemic experience
contribution: 3d modelling + animation, unity scripting
technologies: unity, blender

Pandemic Portal (2021) is an experimental game experience I made to immortalize the four spaces I occupied in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prior to the events of 2020, I had lived between my childhood home of 18 years and my on-campus residence in college. However, the pandemic immediately threw me into four new, temporary spaces within the span of one year. Reflecting upon these rooms and the general displacement caused by the pandemic, I realized I would soon forget the spaces I occupied between 2020 and 2021 and the cat, Kevin, who tragically passed away seven months after I adopted her at the ripe old age of twelve.

The environment alternates between four "worlds": my dorm room at CMU, my boyfriend's parents' house in Hinsdale, Illinois, our temporary studio in West Hyde Park, Chicago, and our larger apartment in East Hyde Park, Chicago. The portals in each room open into the next randomly-chosen space. The user can walk between all four rooms endlessly, and in the larger Hyde Park apartment, Kevin will always follow.

This game experience encapsulates the spaces I occupied and the cat I loved while the world dissolved into chaos.

This project was created in 60-415 Advanced Animation Studio (Spring 2021) taught by Professor Johannes DeYoung.