Tower of Mirage. 

The Tower of Mirage is a Taoism-themed allegorical PC game bringing to life Zhuang Zhou’s story The Butterfly Dream (from a book called Zhuangzi, one of the two foundational texts of Taoism). In this story, master Zhuang doesn’t know if he is a person who dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a person, pointing at the fundamental idea of the self being nothing more but one of the countless manifestations of the Tao, an extension of the cosmos. In the game, the player moves around a tower to discover the heritage left behind Master Zhuang, changing forms between a butterfly and a human in order to solve the Taoism-themed puzzles on each floor to escape the tower and wake up from the dream. 

The game starts when player wakes up at the bottom floor of a tower with the only exit being the hole in the ceiling. Through search he then discovers his ability to switch between a human body and the form of a butterfly at wish, which enables him to move through the levels. On his way he is faced with tasks that contain philosophical thoughts on reality and dreams by famous Chinese poets, and hints on the core concepts of the Tao (道), such as the Three Jewels of Taoism, or divination I-Ching.

​

Created as a collaboration with fellow NYU Shanghai student Cindy Li ('22, IMB).

 

Skills used: Unity, storytelling, gameplay design, game design, C#, narrative design

Course: Creative Game Development & Design

Production Length: 2 weeks