"To all the lonely souls on their journey."
Shirley Huang
Class: Thesis I - 2019
Instructor: Frank Lantz
Get Through is a surreal puzzle-adventure game that brings the player into a strange world with living telephones and other audio devices. In Get Through, The player explores this world as a little man carrying a giant phone. The game aims to represent relationships between people in an abstract playful way by using the metaphor of phone calls. Communication is the core mechanics. What to say and say to whom will be the keys to the puzzles that contain hidden meanings.
The game tells a story about a lonely journey with highs and lows, featuring a rich emotional experience expressed through charming graphics, rich sound design, and environmental storytelling. This story of Get Through is a reflection on my personal emotion journey in the recent two years when I moved from my hometown to New York, a place that makes me feel strange, lonely and overwhelmed. When playing this game, you will find those moments familiar. You can feel the hesitation when you greet strangers; the loneliness when you get lost in the crowd, the excitement when you perform to the public, and the fear and anxiety when you have to face difficulties alone.
For years I have been exploring the potential of video games from the perspective of an artist. I draw inspiration from games such as Journey, Shadow of the Colossus, and Florence, in which the design embraces the natural interactivity of the medium and embed their aesthetic in the gameplay. Starting from there, Get Through is my proof of concept that video game is a powerful medium to tell stories and express feelings. All the puzzles in this game are not made for challenging the players, but for letting them feel and think, in a delightful way. With Get Through, I aim to bring a small but condensed emotional impact to my players, just like a piece of poem or an illustration. The gameplay itself serves as the on rhetoric that constructs meaningful interactions and engaging experience without any text. Hope this game gently touches your heart and echoes a similar sentiment. Hope this is not only my story, but also your story.
