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byteSelf

Game Designer - Sound Designer

Developed by: humorVitreo Studio

Platform: iPad

Prototyped on: Stencyl

Developed on: Unity

byteSelf is a conceptual game that restructures Conway's Game of Life from a 0 player game for 3 players where winning is about submitting yourself to your own predator.

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It was initially made for the Global Game Jam, at PUC/PR in Curitiba, where the main theme was Ouroboros. Later it was reworked as a full title for a commercial release.

Release Trailer

The Process

Conway's Game of Life is a cellular automaton with a defined set of rules:

For a space that is 'populated'

  • Each cell with one or no neighbors dies, as if by solitude.

  • Each cell with four or more neighbors dies, as if by overpopulation.

  • Each cell with two or three neighbors survives.

For a space that is 'empty' or 'unpopulated'

  • Each cell with three neighbors becomes populated.

In byteSelf, we expand this concept to an actual game. Each player is represented by a color (cyan, magenta, yellow) and can only control their initial input by strategically placing their cells in the grid. After that, the cells will behave according to the Game of Life rules, spreading, dying, or maintaining a state of balance.

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But when cells from different colors get closer to each other, they will react to a three-way predation system where one will always have someone to predate and the other one who predates him.

Finally, byteSelf is about submission. Prevailing in the grid is not the key to victory: you have to submit yourself to your own predator in order to win.

Each color has a similar sound, and as one color dominates the board, the higher the volume gets. Each one is on a different band of the sound spectrum - cyan is in a lower pitch, magenta on a middle pitch and yellow on a higher pitch. They were designed like that to prevent sound clipping in case all colors were equally prevailing.
 

Announcement video

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