Nuala
From the novel to interactive space: a project exploring how a story can leave the page and become a three-dimensional world around the player.
From the book to interactive space
Nuala began as an experimental prototype inspired by the novel Nuala Arrived When Nobody Was Looking, also published in Spanish as Nuala llegó cuando nadie miraba.
The project explores how a literary universe can be translated into a three-dimensional interactive experience while preserving the importance of narrative and using new forms of presence, exploration and spatial interaction.
The novel is the starting point, but the adaptation is not intended to reproduce its pages literally. Its characters, situations and narrative elements are transformed into places the player can explore, observe and interpret.
A prototype created for Tilt Five
The first version of Nuala was developed specifically for Tilt Five, an augmented-reality platform capable of presenting three-dimensional worlds over a physical surface.
The prototype investigates how a narrative-driven story can work in this kind of environment: characters, settings, dialogue and progression integrated into an experience the player perceives literally on the table in front of them.
Rather than moving a conventional game to a different screen, Nuala was conceived as an opportunity to experiment with another way of telling and travelling through a story.
An experience designed in three dimensions
Scale, perspective and physical position become part of the experience. Instead of simply looking at a scene inside a monitor, the player can change viewpoint and perceive the setting as a small three-dimensional space in front of them.
This form of presentation shaped the design of environments, characters and interaction from the outset. The experience combines exploration, dialogue and narrative progression, using interaction itself to build the story.
Music and soundscape
The music for Nuala was created by Eduardo Tarilonte, who is also responsible for the project's soundscape.
His work helps shape the identity of Nuala's world and reinforces its narrative and atmospheric dimension, integrating music and environmental sound as part of the experience.
A project still evolving
Nuala is not a closed project. Following the Tilt Five prototype, Crannsoft is working on its adaptation to other extended-reality platforms, including the Meta Quest/Oculus ecosystem.
This evolution requires interaction, presentation and scale to be reconsidered for the characteristics of each device while retaining the project’s narrative and visual identity.
The public information on this page is deliberately limited to the prototype and to aspects of the project that can currently be shown.
Prototype material
The novel
The game originates in Nuala Arrived When Nobody Was Looking, also published in Spanish as Nuala llegó cuando nadie miraba. The relationship between the two formats is central to the project: the same story explored through different languages of expression.
The change of medium allows what is imagined on the page to become place, presence and action. The project exists precisely at this intersection of literature, video games and new visualisation technologies.
Prototype video
Public demonstration of the Nuala prototype for Tilt Five.
An experimental strand within Crannsoft
Nuala represents a different strand within Crannsoft’s catalogue. The project does not begin only with a mechanic or a particular technology, but with a question: how can a story change when it is no longer contained on a page and instead occupies a space around the player?
That process of experimentation continues as the project is adapted to new platforms, keeping Nuala at the meeting point of narrative, technology and new forms of interaction.