Jiaquarium
Night Loops
A journey through the psyche. Escape your night shift at a hotel, explore dreamlike worlds, and lose your sense of self while reliving the time before dawn in this dark. Night loops is a 2D psychological horror puzzle game. Demo currently available on Steam. Night loops is a 3 year passion project spearheaded by my good friend @jiaquarium, together we hope to bring a new form of visual narrative and gameplay to the genre.
Client -> Jiaquarium
Category -> Game Design, Brand Identity, Art Direction, Illustration
Role -> Lead Art director, brand designer
Team -> Jiaquarium
At its core, Night Loops is about the journey of finding one’s place in the psyche, a True Self. It’s about a woman who is traveling through life numb, floating in the day-to-day tedium. Through the path to the True Ending, you help her rebuild the inner world and take back ownership of her mental sense of Self (i.e. finding her “psychic somewhere”).
Originally coined by psychoanalyst Shinhee Han in her discussion of the psychic lives of young adult Asian Americans, the term describes a state of dissociation, a detachment from the psyche. In other words, the sensation of the “False Self” having taken over. It’s a condition often correlated with the absence of a clear geographic belonging or destination.