The Dream of Western Chamber / 梦西厢庭

The Dream of Western Chamber / 梦西厢庭

Type: Research Project in CAMLab, Harvard University

Time: Aug 2020 - Sep 2021

Role: Game designer, Programmer

Area of Research: Chinese literature and culture communication

Research Goal

“Western Chamber embodies the pattern of manipulating and being manipulated our life and destiny…”
— Eugene Wang, Founder and Director of CAMLab

Min Qiji, illustration of the book "*Romance of the Western Chamber*"

"Western Chamber (Romance of Western Chamber)" is a famous ancient Chinese literature about a love story that experienced setbacks and embodies ancient China's traditional culture and thought. It also puts forward an eternal philosophical proposition: how to measure and fight against one's destiny.

The research project focuses on revealing the philosophical thought in Western Chamber, combining the story and its derivative artworks in game designing to disseminate Chinese literature's and stimulate players' imagination of Chinese culture to arouse their interests in Chinese culture and philosophy. The final results including two games, the 2D educational puzzle game and the 3D advanture game, The Dream of Western Chamber (this one).

Personal Contribution

The team's goal was to create a 3D adventure game based on feedback from the educational game that sublimated the philosophy inherent in West Wing. Inspired by What Remains of Edith Finch, we select several of classic scenes in the Romance of the Western Chamber and use abstract expressions to show the characters' psychological states and emotional changes during the story, replicating the obscure but elegant expressions of ancient Chinese literature.

I am the level designer and programmer of the The Dream of Western Chamber, responsible for level design of and implementation using Unity.

Trailer

The trailer is made by Yingtong Lin, the video editer of the team

Gameplay

There are three spaces in the game: reality, drama, and void. The player's identity, location and time are calculated differently in different spaces.

The whole museum and grand view garden exist in parallel. Players enter the grand view garden through the paintings in the museum and return to the museum through the corresponding objects in the grand view garden.
Each painting corresponds to a level, which is based on the chapter and the character. Each level has a unique meaning based on the metaphor in the story.