Hi everyone!
We are ARQUOIA, an indie studio currently embedded in the outback north of Berlin, Germany. Forged in the fires of fine arts and real-time graphics, we’ve always been looking for new ways to blur the lines between art and technology. After some years of labor, we finally came up with our latest experimental first-person game: AENTITY.
https://arquoia.itch.io/aentity
The game “visualizes your acts of watching and trying to understand, letting them become the source of the artwork.” (Bennett Foddy)
In a nutshell, to win this game, you must free the hidden artist in you.
Deeper version:
We are also currently working on a walkable companion website, where you can view uploaded player's stills from AENTITY.
So on the surface, the game is about wandering and relaxing, while creating art and mastering visual composition, something one may use in the real world once in a while. You might stick it on the wall or send your friends a card.
But, this is only the vehicle for something else. At its core, wanting is suffering. The game’s pillars circle around a most DIFFICULT main objective: To have no aim for a while, to experience being FREE. Once understood and identified with the unusual GOAL, you are in a sense protagonist and antagonist in one, and must overcome yourself.
We believe games are the perfect medium to encounter oneself on a level that lies beyond abstract thinking and human consciousness. As artists we strive to cross the boundaries of game design in order to create intrinsically motivated behaviors that players have not experienced before. As human beings, however, we try to invent games that culturally advance humanity in a humanistic sense.
This also includes to reach a broad audience of all ages and walks of life to encourage self-reflection and personal creativity... Our work is meant to use the psychological tension fields that result from playing to help players monitor and find themselves, which in turn can give you an expanded, yet harmonized perspective on the world.
Hope you'll like it :)