Whailing is a voice controlled where the player guides a lost whale through the ocean, eating swedish treats and avoiding enemies.
The concept was was developed collaboratively. My main role in production my role was programming, as well as playtesting. Made with Clara Leivas, Jamin Pirna, Pontus Persson, Valentina Walli, Rebecca Abel Green.




Design Process

The idea grew out of multiple brainstorming sessions where we talked about long distance whale communication and recounted stories of the worlds loneliest whale.

The project brief included the criteria that the game should use a novel form of interaction (ie no mouse, joystick, etc), and we felt voice was an area that would be both fun and challenging.

In the first playtest, users sang into a microphone, which processed their voice with underwater sound effects. The 'game engine' (Clara) would listen to their pitch and move the whale accordingly.
If the whale crashed into an obstacle, it would fall off the board, giving clear feedback to the user. This setup allowed us to test a wide variety of gameplay ideas and scenarios.




Testing a smaller field of view


In the second interation we built a digital prototype, which allowed us to further test the game dynamics, obstacle size, and voice control code.