Detritus sure is a thing

Detritus is a game about trash, and in particular digital trash. Its about the files and things that we scatter about our computers. It also comes from this:

Detritus in reality comes from a question I asked myself around two weeks ago. “I wonder what is even hidden in this mess?”

And so, I worked out a way of finding that out, showing it too myself, and started thinking about digital leftovers.

Its probably not just me, but I know I make a metric tonne of inconsequential images. For work, for jokes or for any number of different things. I have memories I wanted to keep, but forgot about strewn across my computer. All of these are things that have, through time, or through forgetfulness become a kind of trash, taking up space without us even really noticing them.

Unless we bring them up again, well they will stay just that, forgotten.

So that really the only goal of Detritus; a kind of personal nostalgia. I wanted to give people the same experience I had when I first saw what what lurked on my hard drives. I knew I had a lot of leftover images, but knowing that there were around three hundred plus, was both terrifying and exciting.

Who knows what's in that kid of mass; there could be literally anything and I wanted other people to experience that as well. The surprise, joy and horror.

Apart from what Detritus does, Detritus is also a particular kind of project for me. It comes from one of my sketchbook projects. Which are a kind of unity project I make for the sole reason of throwing things together, and making new broken things to be used elsewhere.

In this case it was where I first wanted to recreate the into the spiderverse camera effect. From there I wanted to play around with infinitely large spaces and buildings, and then glitch camera effects. (as seen here) All of these things layered on each other as I explore more and more things, form outline shaders to the final part of this, the file finding and loading.

Apart from some of my first projects (Hello, Out of Context) most of my current projects begin in one of these and then go into their own unity files. It's not all that often that one of these becomes something more without first becoming its own thing.

So there is some poetry in this, Detritus as a project kind of exists within the muck and mess of my playing around. My game design scraps and discarded ideas, and project within and made of the leftovers of other ideas.

Hence the broken and unfinished nature of most of the assets, they were never meant to be seen by anyone else, and that's the point. Its a page of my sketch book I released, and put on display as something serious.

Detritus is, to me then. Both an exploration of things we forget, and made of things that were always meant to be discarded. Trash highlight by trash.

Something something metaphor.

Anyway, I’ve probably rambled enough; but I do have one last thing to ask. If people like this enough, or want it I am more than happy to upload the actual unity file I used as the basis for Detritus for everyone to explore and see the messy hell I call a “project”.

If even one person does, then I’ll upload it and update this post with that link.

Anyway, thanks for your time!

-Max