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Quantum Noesis is the world’s first playable, NFT-based graphic novel. EVI, the world’s first sentient AI, is under attack by those who will stop at nothing to destroy her. Use your wits to clear all twelve levels, win crypto prizes, and unlock the ultimate puzzle: the mystery of consciousness.
Synesis One aims to present several game titles to peak the interests of everyone in our community. This week, and over the next several weeks we want to share the details of the team’s very first game title, Quantum Noesis (you can access the game directly from the website, Synesis.One too). It’s mental and the guys worked really hard to create it from scratch for you! Those who can knuckle through the challenges, will be rewarded.
What is the Game and How Do You Play?
In Quantum Noesis, you are an elite cyber security agent. As a top gamer, YOU have been recruited by the Noosphere DAO, which has crowdsourced and gamified part of its security system. In the game, elite gamers jack in to the metaverse using a neural link helmet. You are assisted by Pilar (short for Compiler), a wise-cracking sidekick program that translates code blocks into a form that taps into human creativity and intuition. There are 36 puzzles of increasing complexity — three per chapter. Solve the puzzles to advance the story and win crypto prizes along the way.
Quantum Noesis is a browser-based game built in Unity. To play, you need to have a Phantom Wallet with a Kanon token or an equivalent amount of $SNS tokens.
Can You Describe the Puzzles?
Puzzles involve putting letters into a grid, assembling word fragments, or deciphering letter substitution codes.
Can you describe the environment?
The fictional world of Quantum Noesis touches on themes in our own world –
authoritarian governments using AI to increase surveillance and control and Big Tech Data-opolies using AI to manipulate and divide us. Like Noosphere, the fictional DAO in our story, synesis.one is aiming to build human-centered, ethical AI for all.
What Does the Title Quantum Noesis Mean, and How did you come up with the Game Title?
Quantum Noesis is an amalgam of quantum — part of the AI is a quantum computer — and Noesis, a Greek word that means cognition or intelligence, or the exercise of reason. In Greek philosophy, it has the additional meaning of the highest kind of knowledge or knowledge of the eternal platonic forms. It took us three weeks to think up the right name —writing ideas onto a window because(we we didn’t have a white board).
Some early game title ideas included:
- Practopoiesis
- Hylozoism
- P-Zombie
How Did the Game Come About?
Our challenge was to build a game using words from our NFTs. Naturally, this led our Head of NFT Gaming to consider word puzzle games — but he wanted to craft something more challenging than the word games many are familiar with, such as Scrabble, Wordle, or Words with Friends, and these games are based on manipulating individual letters. This conundrum led him to discover a legendary puzzle designer who is famous for fiendishly clever and challenge word puzzles — we’ll introduce our puzzle designer to you all in the coming weeks!
What’s Behind the Story of Quantum Noesis?
Quantum Noesis explores themes of freedom and autonomy in a world that is increasingly dominated by a handful of Big Tech data-opolies, which make trillions from our personal data, and authoritarian governments, who use AI to surveille and control their citizens.
The story is fiction, but the threats to human autonomy and freedom are very real. Dark Mirror’s ‘Nose Dive’ episode or documentaries such as The Social Dilemma hint at what our future might look like if we leave AI in the hands of highly centralized corporations or autocratic governments.
What is the Plot?
Quantum Noesis takes place in the year 2035. The Noosphere DAO is on the verge of an astonishing breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence. EVI (Electronic Virtual Intelligence) holds the key to humanity’s future. But there are powerful forces at work to destroy her.
MegaCorp sees EVI as a threat to its monopoly. The CEO, Mike Vanderberg, has joined forces with Russian operatives to burn the Noosphere DAO to the ground and steal the technology for its own ends.
As a player, you’re part of Noosphere’s DAO’s elite security force. EVI has gamified part of her network security, to tap into the creativity, intuition, and pattern recognition abilities of elite gamers. Security vulnerabilities or issues with code blocks are turned into complex audiovisual puzzles that are easier for the human mind to comprehend and solve.
Can You Describe the Game World?
Quantum Noesis is a playable graphic novel. The player must solve puzzles to advance the story. The story plays out in a number of locations in the real world and cyberspace, including the ‘war room’ command center of W^X, the cybersecurity force that keeps the Noesis Network safe. Here players jack in to the DAO’s datasphere. In the virtual world, gamers have a multipurpose tool (MPT), a combo weapon, and hacker tool kit.
As they advance through the game, players will visit other locations in the metaverse, including MegaCorp’s HQ, a Tibetan Monastery, and a virtual Hong Kong. While much of the action centers on solving mind-bending puzzles, Quantum Noesis will immersive you in a science fiction world that feels eerily familiar.
Quantum Noesis: The Art
Quantum Noesis envisions an age of human progress — or a depressing dystopia, depending on our choice. This near future world extrapolates from existing technologies, which is why it seems so eerily familiar. How did we create the unique visual style of Quantum Noesis? Let’s meet the artists who brought the world to life!
Who Did the Concept Art?
Eric Jordan, who serves as an advisor for Synesis.one, agreed to provide artistic direction to the Quantum Noesis project in October 2021. With 22 years of experience in high-end creative direction, design, and motion graphics, Eric has been recognized as one of the world’s top 20 international designers by Net Magazine. His past clients include Electronic Arts, Activision, New Line Cinema, LG Electronics, Space-X, Boeing, Tesla, and many other top global brands.
“I was attracted to the story’s exploration of decentralized systems and artificial intelligence,” explains the New Zealand based designer and creative director. “It aligns with my own interest in the nature of consciousness and gnosis.”
Eric is known for translating high-tech concepts into beautiful forms that resonate with viewers on a higher level. This unique ability shines through in the concept art he created for the game.
Working from the story synopsis, he dreamed up the look of the main characters — the Noosphere DAO’s science team, EVI, the sentient AI, Pilar, the player’s sassy software sidekick, and the villains of the story, including MegaCorp’s sociopathic CEO and his co- conspirator, Volkov. He also helped bring the high-tech environments of the Noesis Network’s datasphere to life.
Eric created the characters and environments in DAZ 3D, a rendering application used for images and video. He then ran them through Cinema 4D and RedShift — a GPU 3D accelerated rendering software — to create the gorgeous avatars and environments of our concept art.
How are You Translating the Script into Images?
Eric’s concept art gave Quantum Noesis it’s unique Science-Fiction look and feel. The next step was translating the 100-page script into individual panels, to tell the story in the visual language of a graphic novel. To bring the story to life, the Quantum Noesis team engaged Bohdan Kravchenko, a Ukrainian artist with a gift for illustrating graphic novels. Bohdan is an expert storyboard artist and illustrator with a wide range of ability and astonishing skill.
His illustrations give the character’s personality and gravitas. “I’m really enjoying working on this project,” says Bohdan. “I love the story and enjoy the process of bringing the world of Quantum Noesis to life.”
What Influenced the Art?
Fans of science fiction films may catch some of the inspirations for the world of Quantum Noesis. The W^X ‘war room, for example, is inspired by the war room in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classic Dr. Strangelove. And the design for EVI was inspired in part by the Maschinenmensch (humanoid robot) from Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic, Metropolis.
Who’s the Team Behind the Game?
Synesis One’s Head of NFT Gaming and Game industry veteran, Tracy Spaight put together our outstanding team of puzzle master, writers, and designers. The team includes:
Puzzle Master Cliff Johnson, whose many awards include ‘Best Puzzle Game Ever’ and ‘Best Retro Game Ever’.
Award-winning artist and creative director Eric Jordan produced the concept art Artist Bohdan Kravchenko who created the beautiful graphic novel panels that tell the story.
The writers, Cyberpunk novelist David Young, author of the Cyberpunk City series Writer Shawn Whitney Fabryka Gier, who have produced games for Playdom and Spil Games, is building the game.