Nominated as the finalist for IGF 2011, Hazard: The Journey Of Life, created by Alexander Bruce aka Demruth is a philosophical first person single player environmental puzzle game.

Built using Unreal Engine 3, Hazard is a response to the monotony of popular games and Demruth desire to create a game he always wanted to create. Starting with simple rules such as removing ability to shoot in the first person shooter type game, Hazard focuses on immersive experience of something that resembles Snake, but instead of controlling a snake, it is you navigating the virtual space, exploring and discovering and defining goals for yourself.

Lets go back to the beginning. The development of “Hazard” technically started at the end of 2006 when I created the Dynamic Geometry system. It started out as an abstract prototype for Snake, and I somehow ended up with a cool way to build levels that were completely mutable. Back at this stage, Hazard got its name because the game was all about being violent and having the world kill the player if they weren’t skillful enough. Although Hazard existed as a multiplayer arena combat game, I was more interested in seeing what I could do with the geometry itself. I spent about 6 months working on it at this stage, which was also 6 months of learning the Unreal Engine, before I decided that I wouldn’t get it all working smoothly over a network, and I put the system down. more

The game is not avaialable for download just yet but you can follow the development on Demruth’s blog including read about general thoughts and processes that have influenced how the game has developed into what can only be described as layers of imagination driven by personal pursual to create and change.

(images source uncommonassembly.com)