Mind's Garden

Mind's Garden is a musical exploration game and immersive audio visualizer. The music you want to listen to is scattered throughout your head, and it's your job to unite the song back together. As you search for the parts of the song, you explore a world that is constantly changing and reacting to the music around you.

Import any of your own songs

With the ability to import any mp3 or wav file into the game, you can experience all of your favorite songs in Mind's Garden, no matter what your favorite song is. Because aspects of the world you explore are controlled by the song you pick, different songs will lead to different game experiences.

Piece together shattered music

The songs that do come packaged with the game are truly shattered into pieces before being scattered throughout the map. This is done by splitting the songs into their component tracks (drums, vocals, etc.) using the help of a fancy artificial intelligence that was trained to split mp3s up into component tracks called Spleeter.

Currently there are three songs packaged in the build:

• Fault - Myrne and Grant
• Someday, Somehow- Wyatt Walker Wear
• Climates- MNMLST

How to play

When you first spawn in the garden, you find yourself next to a small pond, typically with a hill or mountain to one side and a small valley opposite of that. The song has been scattered across the map, and you have to find the four dancing orbs that the song is trapped in and bring them back to the pond you spawned at one by one in order to unite the song again. You can search for these dancing orbs with either your eyes or your ears because the music will get louder and more clear the closer you get to an orb. If you unite the song before the song ends then you still have the rest of the song to explore the world to on your own, there's plenty of the world that you probably didn't find while searching for the dancing orbs, or if you'd like you can simply turn your head to the sky and watch your mind work away to the song.

Controls:

• WASD -> Move Player
• Space -> Jump
• Shift -> Dash
• Mouse -> Look Around
• Escape -> Open Settings
• Left Click -> Take Screenshot (Windows only for now)

Virtual Reality 

Play the game in an immersive virtual reality setting! The virtual reality version of Mind's Garden is Windows only and built to work with HTC VIVE/VIVE Pro and SteamVR. Start the game in 2D mode and choose your music and settings, then use your VIVE to explore the generated worlds. 

Controls:

• 1. Left and Right Top Keys -> Open Settings
• 2. Left and Right Trackpads -> Move Player
• 3. Left and Right Bottom Keys -> General Steam VR Menu
• 4. Left and Right Trigger -> Jump
• 5. Left Grip -> Take Screenshot 
• 5. Right Grip-> Dash 

Creating Mind's Garden

Mind's Garden was created by Kara Metcalfe, Jared Myers, and Peter Rosenthal. It was our capstone project for Technology Arts and Media at CU Boulder. We developed the game over the course of just 11 weeks, and kept a weekly development blog of the game that is part of the GitHub repository for this game, check it out if you're interested!