Octris

Octris is a multimodal virtual reality Tetris variant. Players are surrounded by a circular Tetris board that they begin playing normally, but as they progress in the game the board fades from sight and they must continue using only the sounds of the pieces and the stack.

Like the visual pattern-matching game of standard Tetris, Octris’ audio game is also based on pattern matching. Each piece has a corresponding chord, and each rotation of the piece is a note within that chord. When a piece is positioned properly, the complete chord plays. If a piece does not match the pattern of holes in the stack below it, the piece’s note will not fit into the chord being played by the stack. At the end of the game, the notes used are played back to create an impromptu composition.

This event was sponsored by the University of Maine Intermedia MFA Program, Dr. Nicholas Giudice, Assistant Professor, UMaine Spatial Engineering, and the Virtual Environments and Multimodal Laboratory.