It is the distant future. Humanity has wiped itself out, but every single entity on Earth has become sentient. You run the info booth at the only Mall on Spaceship ATMOS, the ark that has left earth carrying one of every single being as they search out another place to call home. Using your speech translator, you will tune into the unique language of every customer, helping them find the information they are looking for. Additionally, your control center contains numerous tools for you to help, including a mall map, directory, camera system, control over the piped-in music, and more.

When beginning to think about a voice-controlled game experience, we wanted to focus on communication. The technological lapses in speech-recognition create an interesting opportunity to explore the inherent gaps in spoken communication. We exemplify this by having the player communicating specifically “through” a machine responsible for translating a variety of “languages” that innanimate objects might have. Additionally, while many voice-controlled games place the player in a role of commanding authority, we instead wanted to position the player as a helper, trying their best to communicate with these NPCs and help them gain the information they need. Lastly, we build out the entire game as an embodied experience, physically placing them in front of a large teller-style “window” into the world of the mall, along with a stylized microphone and neo-futurist control center. All of these decisions help to push empathy to the forefront of the experience as the player learns the various stories that unfold through the requests of the mall’s patrons.

TIKATMOS was developed in collaboration with the Whaaat!? Lab of the ATLAS Institute at CU Boulder

TIKATMOS won the Live Action Award at the 2022 IndieCade Festival