As an experience, music festivals are in a league of their own – a crazy messΒ of colours and confusion. But we all know we wouldn’t trade it for anything. Now, with this wacky video game comes a chance to relive that awesome feeling.
Brendan Lehman, a 26-year-old neuroscience masterβs student at Laurentian University believes that if things that make up a music festival could be coded, it could make for a pretty exciting video game.Β To do this, he travels in trailer with Sudbury-based artist Holly Robin around Ontario, attending music festivals in this trailer, that acts as a DIY mobile coding lab.
(Image Courtesy: Jordan Pearson/motherboard.vice.com)
The game is called Digital Forest, and each level is inspired by a different music festival, with the details taken from what they found at the fest itself. In the game, the player jumps freely in a world of festivals, picking up collectibles and power-ups along the way that are tailored to the band on that specific level.
(Image Courtesy: Jordan Pearson/motherboard.vice.com)
The first level is inspired by River and Sky, a folk-centred music festival in Northern Ontario, so the images are appropriately cutesy and colourful. Another level that’s inspired by Electric Eclectics, an experimental music festival in Northern Ontario. Lehman says that this level will be decidedly more dark and and weird, and the art more “esoteric and nonsensical”. Digital Forest is also supposed to capture the non-linear flow of music festivals, so players can return to levels, experience them and pick up collectibles that they missed.
Slated to release in October, Digital Forest is going to be something you’ve never seen before. Keep tabs on Festival Sherpa for more news about it.