YXM
LD
THE BARREN ERA
The world is barren, but lust grows.
The gutters of lust are filled with battles.
Conquer, or be conquered, what is survival in a barren world?
The right to choose is given to you, which door will your key open?
The Barren Era delves into the conflict between interest and morality, resources and exploitation.
Players evolve by depriving body parts of other creatures to survive in a post-apocalyptic and resource-deficient world. In the game, players need to make a choice on the premise of being given the power of deprivation. Deprivation? Or not to deprive?
By making their own choice, players face the moral dilemma of surviving by depriving others’ right to live
MAIN FEATURES
Unveil A Barren World Full of Atrociousness of Humanity
Evolve By Depriving Body Parts Of Other Creatures
Combat, Deprive, Survive
Find A Moment Of Peace In Your Own Community
GAMEPLAY
DISPLAY
NARRATIVE
Genetic Modification Experiment
Humans have been conducting genetic modification experiments on the animals, with resultant rapid development in the genetic modification technology.
World War III
The desires of human expansion led to the outbreak of World War III. The earth has been destroyed by nuclear weapons.
Development of the Technology
Humans could easily visualize and manipulate the genes of animals on a screen. By manipulating the genetic chips on the screen, humans could arbitrarily create mutant creatures by combining the genes from different animal body parts for their own benefit.
The Destroyed Earth
The world has become a wreck, resource-deficient, and barren.
Fight For Limited Resources
The remaining survivors had to utilize the mutant creatures to fight against each other for limited resources.
Fight Between Survivors
Deprivation of Body Parts
In order to survive, the humans have been constantly killing each other, robbing limited resources, and the powerful genes from each other.
Only the one with the most powerful genetically modified creature would survive in this barren world.
INSPIRATION
Organ Transplantation
A friend of my father, suffering from Leukemia, has been the inspiration for ‘The Barren Era’ and was based upon his experience with a bone marrow transplant. Despite being told that he would be the next candidate, he has been waiting since long due to the non-availability of the donor marrow. His time was running fast because of the life-threatening nature of the disease. Moreover, he came to know that he was not getting his matching bone marrow due to corruption in the hospital. Finally, unable to wait any longer, he had to sell his house for 2 million RMB and become another resource predator, to arrange for his transplant.
This story makes me wonder about power and the power to deprive others of their rightful needs and conflicts between survival & mortality, interest & morality.
Colonialism
Since 1415, several European countries had invaded and colonized Africa. 95% the territory was invaded by the Western countries from the 19th to the 20th century. African natural resources including palm oil, ivory, rubber, gold, diamonds, metals, and cotton were drained out by the Europeans. The French treasury has been receiving about 500 billion dollars each year in foreign exchange reserves from the African countries according to the colonial debt that was forced onto them.
The phenomenon of colonialism, the power to deprive others, and overtaking of the resources make me wonder about the conflicts between economic/mainstream interest & morality in the cultural and political scale.
Neuralink Brain Chip
The Neuralink is the neural interface technology company by Elon Musk. It has been developing a device that could be embedded in the brain of a person, where it would record the brain activity and potentially stimulate it. In 2020, Neuralink showed off one of its chips embedded in a pig named Gertrude.
This event, to certain extent, reflected the exploitation of animals by humans. There has always been a conflict between interest and morality, such as humans depriving animals of their autonomous will to live for their own benefit, which reminds me of anthropocentrism, bioethics, and animal liberation.
MY THOUGHTS
In most games, killing seems to be a very natural and intuitive choice for players. Games seem to be a window for people to vent their unsatisfied emotions in reality through violence. Game often throws players into countless missions of killing "enemies", but isn't the killer itself also the "enemy". In those games, players neither think about the consequences of pulling the trigger nor the rightness or wrongness of this action.
In The Barren Era, there's a strong conflict between killing and ethics. It also reveals the evil of human nature exposed in the face of survival just like the bone marrow transplant story mentioned before. Everyone on barren world wants to survive. Scarcity of resources mean not everyone can survive. To ensure your own survival, whether you will deprive other's right to live? Continuous deprivation will give you endless power. Keep killing and upgrading, you may become the most powerful player in the world and the biggest demon of all.
Resource deprivation is ubiquitous in our life. At micro-level, it can be a competition for rankings, a fight for money. At macro-level, it can be countries with more power deprives resources from vulnerable countries. In human society, competition seems to be everywhere. However, energy is conserved. Resources are finite and do not increase out of nowhere. The more you deprive, the less others will get. The joy of a celebration is often accompanied by the tears of another side.
POSITION
Concept, Programmer, Game Designer, 3D Artist: Yuxuan Mao