Dave Sapien — Indie Game Developer

Kanso

Your moment of Zen

Kanso is a mindfulness game where you trace around circular forms, bringing players into a meditative state of flow.

Kanso is a hyper relaxing follow the line game.
Avoiding obstacles while you trace around circular forms and finding your moment of Zen.

Inspired by the Zen calligraphy practice of Ensô, where every day you paint an uninhibited ink circle on a blank sheet of paper.
Expressing a physical moment of reflection, focus, and freedom of flow.

Featuring:

320 levels
Unique meditative gameplay
Around two hours of play time
Well over 1 hour of original music
Visual narrative
Designed specifically to manafest relaxation and well being

Available for Steam, iOS, Android:

Collaborations

Selected collaborative interactive projects

Throughout my career I have had the pleasure of working some of the most creative people I have ever encountered. While seeking out the most interesting projects I have had the great honour of helping these people achieve their creative visions, and working with who I now call my friends. While there are too many adventures to list, here are some of the more memorable projects.

Reverse The Odds
As technical relief, I worked with Chunk an award-winning Scottish digital agency — on the Emmy award-winning Reverse The Odds game.

During gameplay the player is prompted and guided to identify cancer cells in biopsy slides, real images from real patients, helping with early diagnosis and easing the burden of health professionals.
The project helped Cancer Research UK crowdsource cancer analysis, leading to millions of cancer slides being reviewed by the public.

Frank Quitely: The Art of Comics
As designer and developer, I collaborated with Frank Quitely and Once Were Farmers to produce an interactive installation for Frank Quitely: The Art of Comics at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.
An interactive colouring book experience that takes the user through the creative process of making a comic book.

Starting with Quitely’s early sketches the user paints each stage. One layer after another, sketch, finished pencil, inked line work, blocked colour, and finished coloured comic page. Making you feel like a great comic book artist.

Ingr3dients
I also worked with the late Alasdair Gray, UZ Events, and RM Star to design and develop a large interactive installation for the Ubiquitous Chip fortieth anniversary event, which went on to win multiple UK event awards .

Working with large scale 3d stereoscopic projections, projection mapped installations, and mainly working on designing and executing a cutting edge interactive projected living pond.

HatsumiVR
Proudly worked with Sarah Ticho on her Hatsumi VR body-mapping project as a brush designer and engineer.

Bringing the interactive experience to mobile Web XR. An experience that enables people to visually translate the experience of emotions and pain onto the body in VR.

The project has now evolved into the critically acclaimed Soul Paint, a virtual reality body-mapping experience by Sarah Ticho & Niki Smit , backed by behavioural scientists and researchers and narrated by Rosario Dawson.

8BitDo Tomtoc
As part of social media promotional events I have had the pleasure of working with 8BitDo and Tomtoc, creating novelty limited run designs or concepts for their products.

Working with premium video game controller manufacturer 8BitDo as part of their 10 year anniversary, I designed a "taco" variant of the 8BitDo Ultimate controller.

And to launch the new Tomtoc protective Nintendo Switch 2 case, I designed a series of exciting concept designs themed around play with the Switch 2.

ZX Plectrum

Play ZX Spectrum loading sounds as a musical instrument

The critically acclaimed ZX Plectrum lets you perform the iconic ZX Spectrum loading sounds as a playable instrument on iOS and Android.

Relive the crisp sounds of your youth by changing loading phases and pitch to create strange but familiar music.

Featured on Dara O Briain’s Go 8 Bit broadcast television show and used live by the multi-platinum band Placebo.

What people say about ZX Plectrum:
"ZX Plectrum lets you make music Spectrum style on your iPhone" pocket-lint.com
"Utterly pointless but also utterly engaging" bamm.tv
"For Nostalgia lovers of a very specific demographic this will sound like heaven" calmdowntom.com
"The Greatest iPad App of ALL TIME" conoroneill.net

Available for iPhone and iPad:

Dial Upstrum

Play the 56k DialUp handshake sounds as a musical instrument on your iPhone or iPad!

Introducing Dial Upstrum!
Play the 56k DialUp handshake sounds as a musical instrument on your iPhone or iPad!
Plugin to your favourite AUv3 host and make unique music unlike anything else.
Boot up that beige box, hear the sweet symphony of your 56k modem screeching into life, and prepare to surf the information superhighway like it’s 1999!

Available for iPhone and iPad:

Projects

Painted Nature

Kanso

Painting Books

ZX Plectrum

Previous collaborations

PooBarr the pooping bear

Paint it! Finger colouring

Roul

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