Created in one weekend for Global Game Jam 2018 to the theme of frequency, reCAPTIVE is a seemingly simple image recognition game with a deep ARG story about the program’s artificial intelligence. Following the clues will take you to hidden files, tweets, blogs and reveal the true goal of the game.
Game “Synopsis”
Think you have a fast response time? See how quickly you can complete a series of simple recognition challenges. reCAPTIVE is a recognition and response time skill tester designed to gauge the transmission speed of visual stimuli to the brain, created with the support of a prototype Neural Network called Jambot18.
Video Alt Text:
Gameplay video of reCAPTIVE, with welcome text directing the player to “See how quickly you can complete a series of recognition challenges!” The player ticks a box marked “I am not a robot” then completes tasks requiring them to click requested objects in a grid. Eventually an error appears exclaiming “Unusual Behaviour. Sometimes recaptive mixes up images. Check the Read Me file in the game folder if you run into any issues.” After this, the player is directed to “Identify all the dogs” however there are only images of cinnamon roles available.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Team
- Design Lead / Programming: Matt Dyet
- User Interface / Design: Jess Watson
- Writing / Narrative Design: Morgan White
- Sound Designer: Chris Head
SOFTWARE
- Unity
- Photoshop
- Illustrator
ROLE: Game & UI Designer
As a Designer on this project, my role was both to work with the team to develop the overarching story puzzles, as well as to create art assets and user interface elements. Concepts of the story and visuals were based on the ‘I am not a robot’ security features, with a clean familiar interface and a variety of free-use photographs to simulate the image-based Captcha measures. Lead Designer Matt Dyet goes into more detail on the concepts behind the game in his blog post Pulling Back the Curtain – The Making of reCAPTIVE.
Ninjeska 