A journey into the soul of a home
An experimental video game exploring memory, place and time through Unreal Engine and immersive technology.
The Project
Our Home is an independent R&D project exploring how emerging technologies can create richer forms of interactive storytelling.
The experience transforms a real historic building into a living digital world, where players uncover the memories left behind by generations of former inhabitants. Inspired by psychological cinema, immersive theatre and environmental storytelling, the house itself becomes the narrator, revealing its history through exploration rather than exposition.
As the project evolved, it grew beyond a technical experiment into the foundations of a narrative game. Working alongside game writers, Unreal artists and developers, the story, gameplay and technology have been developed in parallel, creating an experience where every creative and technical decision serves the emotional journey.
The Story
The player explores a digital recreation of the historic Master Shipwright's House, uncovering fragments of memories left behind by those who once lived there. As each memory is discovered, the house transforms around them, revealing stories that span generations through shifts in architecture, light, sound and atmosphere.
Rather than following a linear narrative, players piece together the building's history through exploration. A Victorian bride longing for home, a child experiencing the Blitz, and moments of love and loss from more recent decades emerge as emotional snapshots, each leaving a lasting imprint on the space itself.
At the heart of Our Home is the idea that places remember us. Every room, object and fragment of sound becomes part of a living archive, inviting players to reflect on the traces we leave behind and the stories that continue long after we're gone.
The creative challenge was to make the house feel alive. Every technical decision was driven by the question: how can the environment itself become an active storyteller?
The project combines Unreal Engine, photogrammetry and Gaussian Splatting to recreate real spaces with an extraordinary level of authenticity, before transforming them through real-time lighting, weather simulation, procedural effects and interactive gameplay. Rather than aiming for realism alone, these technologies allow the house to shift between memory and reality as players explore.
A recurring visual motif throughout the experience is the use of particles. They represent memories forming, fragmenting and dissolving over time, becoming a poetic device that visualises ideas of remembrance, loss and transformation. Combined with spatial audio, environmental effects and interactive systems, these elements create a world that feels responsive, emotional and constantly changing.
As an ongoing R&D project, Our Home continues to evolve as new creative technologies emerge, providing a space to experiment with new workflows and develop ideas that increasingly influence my commercial practice.
Crafting the world
Outcome
Our Home premiered at the London Festival of Architecture, where it was showcased as an exploration of the future of immersive storytelling.
More importantly, it has become an invaluable R&D platform, helping develop creative workflows and technologies that have since been adopted across commercial projects.
