Harvest of Hope

Imagine stepping into a world where reality shifts with your every move. Welcome to "Harvest of Hope," an augmented reality experience where you journey from a bleak, dystopian present towards a vibrant, idyllic future. Inspired by classic national romantic paintings and the voyages of European emigrants, players collect bright oranges symbolizing hope and freedom, gradually transforming their surroundings.

Movement reveals lush trees and the dream of a better world, but to harvest hope—the oranges—you must pause and face the “bad world”. Placing all the oranges on the serving dish will brighten your environment and reward your process.

"Harvest of Hope" isn't just a game—it's a cultural journey that inspires players to reflect on their reality and the importance of hope in challenging times. Ready for a better world, one orange at a time?

Gameplay & Cultural Impact

"Harvest of Hope" integrates cultural heritage by including elements in the gameplay that have inspiration from national romantic art and historical emigration journeys. Players experience empowerment through gameplay that emphasizes the EU value of freedom by actively engaging them in transforming their environment, freeing them from the dystopian world. This interaction aims to spark reflection on today's world and to inspire positive change.

Team Reflection

	Roles
Mai	Storyteller, Crafter
Linn Emilie	Designer, Crafter
Selma	Gamemaster, Artist, Crafter

Throughout the game development process, our team collaborated, utilizing diverse skills. Regular work sessions and iterative feedback loops allowed us to refine our concept – from initial ideation and expert consultations to interactive prototyping. Each team member contributed with their unique perspective and creativity, enriching our cultural game world and ensuring the integration of cultural heritage and EU values. The collaborative experience strengthened our shared vision and resulted in meaningful and adventureful gameplay. In this process, our team had fluid roles, meaning that all team members had a say in project decisions, and might have worked on areas that were not exclusive to the designated roles.

Converging on Our Game Concept

The Cultural Game Jam Kit provided us with helpful methods for turning our ideas from the experience phase, into an engaging game concept. During the initial art walk, two art pieces caught our attention and were heavily used as inspiration for the gameplay. These art pieces gave us the idea of the good versus bad world and also introduced us to the idea of using oranges as a depiction of hope.

The expert council suggested we take another look at the exhibition, to see whether other art pieces picturing oranges could work with our game concept. Here, we saw a painting of oranges on a silver platter that we thought fit perfectly with our game concept. This gave us the idea of including a platter in our game.

Using the Culture + Value + Game Collage method, we visualized our game concept and how this connected to the art pieces.

Prototype Implementation

Our gameplay revolves around two main interactions:

1. Grabbing & Dropping Oranges: The player can grab and throw the oranges, and a feedback mechanism (a positive sound) is triggered when the player has successfully placed an orange on the table. When all oranges have been collected, a celebratory sound and confetti are triggered.
2. Environment Switching: Movement reveals the good world while remaining stationary returns the scene to the bad world. Gathering all three oranges lets the player remain in the good world.

During the implementation process, we faced several challenges. Most prominently, the detection of a physical table revealed itself as a challenge. However, we managed to make the detection of real objects and interacting with them possible using the Mixed Reality Toolkit’s Anchor Prefab Spawner in combination with creating an invisible prefab to place on top of the detected table.

Another challenge during development was the environment switching based on player movement. This involved a lot of tedious trial and error and tweaking of parameters, to make the shift seem as natural as possible. To make the shifting even more seamless, we made it gradual by manipulating the alpha value (transparency) of the leaves based on the duration of the player’s movement.

	Version
Headset	Meta Quest 3S
Editor	2022.3.57f1
Meta XR SDK	74
Assets used	Plate  Confetti  Oranges Trees  Bushes
Sounds used	Confetti and Yay Rain and Thunder Twinkle/Sparkle Peer Gynt Suite no. 1, Op 46 - I. Morning Mood

Game Evaluation

To evaluate our game, we created a questionnaire that captured perceived workload, participant perception, and open-ended feedback. The user study involved 18 participants.

Our game successfully fostered a calm and accessible experience without overwhelming players. Perceived performance was high, and effort was moderate, indicating active engagement without unnecessary strain. The stillness/movement mechanic was seen as meaningful, though the emotional impact of the world shift varied. Overall, the game provided a balanced, low-stress, and engaging experience with clear player accomplishment, while offering the potential to further enhance emotional consistency, for example by adding more distinct elements like flowers to the good world.

Participants appreciated the game concept and, after viewing the reference artworks, recognized the influence of the paintings—especially the symbolic oranges from the harbor painting. Technical issues with the oranges led to expected feedback about improving their consistency and interactions, which will be a focus for future development.

Overall, the questionnaire revealed that we are very close to our goal, with only a few technical challenges remaining to be solved. This includes solving the issue with the oranges, making the good world more luscious, and adding a physical plate to the gameplay.

Access the source code for our game here.