Playing On Yggdrasil PDF Download

With Yggdrasil I have created a work that is looking to find a way to reconnect to my Scandinavian roots through storytelling and the medium of interactive software. Yggdrasil is a video game focusing on the story of the great Norse tree of origin Yggdrasil and its sudden reemergence into the modern world. Hearing of its renewed existence creatures and beings from around the globe set out to gain the powers and abilities of Odin, the Norse god, in which the tree is known to possess. The story is then told through competitive play, similar to 90's style arcade games, and built within the framing of a combined tropical and Norse game world. Animals tied to Norse mythical figures battle against each other, under player control, to take Yggdrasil's prize. Yggdrasil was created as a video game to execute aspects of storytelling and interaction within a form relevant to present cultural conditions. Through the making of this piece I attempt to rejoin with my distant and deeply rooted Norse origins while exploring what it means to act as a storyteller. Yggdrasil seeks to explore the necessities of traditional storytelling within the frame of a modern medium. Rather than taking on the conventional and long form of oral narrative Yggdrasil exists as experiment in storytelling created for a disposable society. In this way Yggdrasil acts as a reconstructed bridge and vehicle for myth and tradition. Yggdrasil is a step towards my goal of blending cultural context and mythical history into one tale that is receivable in multiple forms such as interaction and performance. Through Yggdrasil I seek to find a underlying lessons and knowledge in Norse myth through the act of storytelling. The Yggdrasil video game performs as the story as the source, the storyteller as the translator, and the listener as the receiver. These functions combine to form Yggdrasil's storytelling basis.