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Games

Dive Into a Deep-Sea Digital Picture Book

Isaac Cohen’s interactive story, 'Enough,' is like a psychedelic deep-sea episode of 'Planet Earth'.
GIFs and images courtesy of the artist.

Creative coder Isaac Cohen’s beautifully interactive picture book is like a psychedelic deep sea episode of Planet Earth. As if extracted from David Attenborough’s acid dreams, the project titled, Enough dives into the coming-of-age story of Mani, a jellyfish-like protagonist. Through the book’s 10 digital pages, readers follow Mani’s story, directing her path through Cohen’s dynamic fantasy world through the movement of a cursor.

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Cohen worked on the project while he was living by the California coast, finding inspiration in swims through kelp forests. “I would just grab a pair of swim goggles, and chill as this seaweed would undulate in the breakers, and then go back up to the house and code until it looked right,” Cohen tells The Creators Project. Similarly to her creator, Mani swims through “a sequencer forest, enters a golden sphere, and discovers many other audio-visual delights.” Each of these new scenes is paired with a site specific song which Cohen created with a unique set of instruments that users can experiment with.

Alongside the audio and visual simulation, Cohen’s book fosters a calming mindfulness, combining the meditative feeling of reading a book with the excitement of playing a video game. As he explains, “If I had to describe the exact emotion, I think it would have to be that moment when you are out camping, and it’s just totally silent, except for the crackling of a fire, and you look up and see the Milky Way, and it makes you feel just so small, but so mysterious, and everything just feels so holy."

Enough is a free browser game formatted to feel like an immersive picture book.

More of Isaac Cohen’s works can be found on his website. Related:

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