The Philosophy of Above + Below 2

Disclaimer: Above + Below 2 is in no way to promote religion or discourage from it. It just uses religious metaphors for gaming purposes and to explore basic human inclinations.

Above + Below 2 is our entry for the VR Jam for Oculus Rift.

We wanted to make a free flying game that is controllable only with the Virtual Reality Headset “Rift” provided by Oculus VR. It should be remiscent of flying in dreams and the ultimate goal is to couple it with the Emotiv Headset so you can play and control it via thought-commands while lying in bed.

It turned out quite neat but either the control scheme is too complicated (which is said to be true for a couple of our games), or the game is not as appealing as we thought it might be. But that’s life.

let us share some thoughts regarding the philosophy of the game:

A Picture of Human Life:

Above + Below 2 is a metaphor on the human condition. It gives the player the choice between good and evil (better: bad), and this choice is allegorically visualised, in the tradition of the monotheistic religions, as the ascend to heaven or the descend to hell.

The verticality of the flight up or down plays beautifully into this concept:

Heaven:

As one has to look up to fly to heaven, it is necessary to straighten the body and to put up a tension in the spine. It isn’t easy to hold the head high for a period of time so there is a physical effort one has to deal with. Also, by looking up one does not see one’s own body, the materiality is hidden as long as one has ‘the head in the clouds’.

Hell:

The opposite is true for the descend to hell. It is more relaxing to look down, the player’s body, supported by gravity, bends naturally, as if to underline the relative easiness of the ‘dark side’. By looking down one is also confronted with the ‘sinful’ naked flesh of the body, as if going down is coupled with a more ‘material’ way.

Nacked:

The nakedness plays also another part: it’s the vulnerable self that is always in danger to be squashed between greater powers, a vulnerability which some experience in dreams, especially at younger age.

Way to Go:

But you can’t go straight to heaven or hell by just flying up or down. In real life your deeds decide if you turn out good or bad. In Above + Below 2 this is represented through the meeting with the guards, Angels or Demons, and one can imagine them as the virtues or sins one has to incarnate first, to be judged later.

The Minions:

Each one of the three enemies has a special meaning:

The birds, Crows or Pigeons:
They are the little annoying things in life. You can keep them at a distance if you don’t loose sight of them, but one moment of unattentiveness and they are upon you again.

The Plane:
It represents the inevitability of materiality, the big, hard facts of life which you can only dodge, hoping to be avoided if you only duck hard enough.

The enemy guards, Angels or Demons:
They are the things you can’t run away from. The sooner you face them, the better.

Then there are the enemy crowds, Butterflies, Flies and Mosquitos:
They are easily confused with the vital potions (especially with the current resolution of the Rift) but only slow you down, thus making you an easy prey for the other enemies.

The World:

In the infinite cloud-scape one can go in every direction without any restriction, but that does not mean that it does not matter where you go. There is a strategic element in avoiding big cloud formations, as inside them one cannot see clearly and is always in danger of skipping a guard, a potion or running straight into an enemy.

The Controls:

The controls are a mix of looking around freely and some restrictions. The player can pan her head horizontally, but tilting has multiple effects, it translates vertically, turns the heading, or even enables or disables horizontal movement. In all of this it is a metaphor for looking in the real world, where how one glances has a social impact as well as a practical one, e.g. on the road, in a car, everywhere looking around is purposeful and far away from just turning one’s head.

The Damage Model:

Being hit by an enemy does not diminish health until the player dies, but obscures the vision with an even stronger motion blur. The idea is, that the game does not end when the health-bar is at zero, but when the player decides that he cannot continue, whether because of dizziness or out of lack of accurate vision.