Team members and Roles

Yunting Wang: Designer & Storyteller & Crafter

Wei Xiong: Gamemaster & Storyteller & Crafter

Yaning Wen: Artist & Storyteller & Crafter

Artwalk

The first painting depicts red giants oppressing green giants, filled with a heavy and oppressive atmosphere. The white strings in the hands of the red giants seem to symbolize power or violence, binding the freedom of the green giants and trampling on their human rights and dignity. The background is dark and the land is barren, enhancing the overall sense of suffering in the scene.

The second painting creates a harmonious, peaceful, and idealized pastoral atmosphere: sunlight falls gently over rolling hills, while a cottage, trees, and a distant lake coexist in quiet stillness. The warm and soft color palette, along with details such as the house, tree shadows, and the faraway sky, conveys a sense of order in life and a serene closeness to nature.

Reflection:

The first painting evokes deep reflections on human rights, dignity, and freedom. It echoes Europe's emphasis on individual dignity in the development of humanism and modern democracy, while raising an important question: when faced with systemic oppression, should we choose to resist, remain silent, or become part of the oppression? This is precisely an ethical issue well-suited to be explored through interactive gameplay.

The second painting evokes a deep sense of harmony between humans and nature.  The peaceful countryside, flowing water, and distant cottage reflect a world where balance, simplicity, and mutual respect prevail. It aligns with the European value of Human Dignity, portraying a life where individuals can live with integrity, calm, and belonging, without fear or oppression. The open landscape symbolizes Freedom—freedom of movement, thought, and lifestyle.

Game ideas

Ideation wheel

Values: Human Rights

Games: Simulations/Senses

Culture: Cultural Gameworlds

Citizenship: Remixing Heritage/History

Culture change

We reflected on how cultural heritage can create meaningful game design and developed key design questions:

How might we use interactive storytelling to help players understand the lived experience of oppression and reclaim human dignity?

How might we use AR to invite players to take ethical action in defense of human rights and freedom?

Example: Through the lens of cultural heritage, the first artwork can be reimagined as a game world that invites players to witness, question, and ultimately resist systems of control. Rather than simply representing the oppressed, a game can empower players to intervene, make meaningful choices, and actively shape the outcome of unfolding situations.

Culture storming

1. Stand with Them

Stand with Them is an AR game that invites players to step into a world where power, oppression, and human dignity are made visible through interactive storytelling.  Inspired by a powerful painting that portrays red giants oppressing green figures, the game places the player in real-world environments overlaid with symbolic AR scenes of social control and resistance.

As players move through physical spaces, they encounter green figures forced into dehumanizing labor by red giants—visual metaphors for systems of power.  Each scene presents the player with opportunities to engage in dialogue, make moral decisions, and choose whether to intervene, remain silent, or side with the oppressors.  These choices affect the virtual world around them, altering the environment, the behavior of the characters, and ultimately the outcome of the experience.

Rather than simply observing injustice, Stand With Them empowers players to act—to reflect on European values such as freedom, human dignity, and human rights, and to explore what it truly means to stand up for others.  The game is not only an artistic interpretation of cultural heritage but also a tool for cultural reflection and ethical engagement in mixed reality.

2. Threads of Time

Threads of Time is an adventure-puzzle game where players piece together cultural stories from different European eras, uncovering hidden connections between past and present. Each puzzle reveals more of Europe's shared heritage, demonstrating how freedom has driven cultural evolution and unity.

The game unfolds through interactive puzzles that represent historical crossroads and turning points, highlighting struggles for personal and cultural freedoms.

Players navigate various eras, restoring lost or fragmented cultural stories by making strategic choices reflecting freedom or restriction. Each choice leads to a different future, generated by LLM predictions.

3. Return to Quiet

Return to Quiet is an immersive AR game that invites players to step into a serene, idealized European countryside—brought to life through augmented reality and inspired by traditional landscape paintings.   The game transforms the player’s physical environment into a living cultural landscape, filled with fields, forests, and gentle hills, where natural harmony and heritage coexist.

As players explore the AR-enhanced space, they gradually discover signs of imbalance: trees fading, animals missing, traces of pollution, or quiet human absence.   These subtle disruptions reflect the impact of modernity and disconnection from traditional ways of living.   The player’s task is to listen, observe, and act gently—replant a tree, restore a cabin, return animals to their habitat, or protect the riverbank from erosion.