Different shades of the game of life.
Some time ago, I came across an article about cellular automata - systems in which cells following certain set of rules create an organic looking behavior. I heard of it before (especially the well known Conway's Game of Life), but I have never actually tried it myself. I was fascinated how those simple rules can create such complexity and I thought that bringing Game of Life to the table could look nice combined with my previous research on tweening engines and perlin noise.
I've played a lot with the idea by adding distortion to the whole generation process to make the algorithm look seamless and also a bit of interactivity - players can click on any of the cell to make it "alive" and alter the whole simulation.
I left the project for several months and came back with the idea of representing the simulation as a VR experience. Initially, I wanted to reproduce the feeling of touching something with your fingers and make it alive. That led to making a cell cave around the player on which the Game of Life is played.
Simultaneously I was testing different parameters of the simulation, different meshes for the cells and a background ambient sound. The one that felt especially right was an unsettling train station sound that I came across during the development of Something Random's Train Game. Something clicked there. I turned everything red (the color of blood), changed the meshes to hands asking for help and sinking to the floor with the looping accompaniment of train leaving the station. The interpretation is yours of course, but it really got me thinking about the Holocaust trains, leaving home for good, asking for help and reaching to see the outside for the last time. In that context, the use of Game of Life algorithm sounded deadly ironic.