Beautiful Life
Final Year Project
Beautiful Life is my final year project. It is a semi-open world game I have created with Unity. It is also considered an experimental ideological game. Beautiful Life allows the player to experience the desperation and hopelessness of an individual under overbearing social control.
A Game about Social Control and Depression
Beautiful Life is a large scale project I created over the time span of around a year. The game starts with a delightful tutorial and achievement system, yet, it ends up with a tragic story and hopeless surroundings. Players are taught that life is full of possibilities in the beginning while they are left with no options but to commit suicide in the very end. Beautiful Life demonstrates how extreme social control can be like and shows a dystopian situation of future Hong Kong. The game is not only questioning the nature of modern society but also shows how powerful social control can be.
Sensitive Topic
The game involves several controversial and sensitive topics. One may ask if the game is promoting any political ideas or if it is a game that encourages players to commit suicide as life itself is hopeless. Indeed, Beautiful Life adapts a Kafkaesque style in which players are immersed in an imagined dark atmosphere. For instance, players are required to type numerous apologetic letters for a tech company without prior knowledge of the purpose behind it. Players are guided to achieve goals, yet, these achievements are simply pointless. Nonetheless, Beautiful Life is an exaggerated interpretation of a future reality. Similar to Franz Kafka’s novel, the purpose behind the creation of Beautiful Life is to produce a white horror. The audience should not only feel depressed and desperate after playing but should also be able to reflect on reality and struggle for a better future.
Technical
Beautiful Life was a one-man project. With the exception of 3D modeling, I was responsible for game prototyping, programming, design and music/sound effects.