How al-Jazari helped Design The House of Hikmah
819 years ago, the medieval Islamic engineer Ismail al-Jazari designed the Elephant Clock. It was the first water clock to record the passage of temporal hours accurately. Its design was detailed in his book, The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices.
Wow! How cool! What does that have to do with video games?! Well, what if I told you that Ismail al-Jazari was a concept artist on Lunacy Studio’s The House of Hikmah? He didn’t know it at the time, but 800 years later, his designs would inspire the environment art and character design in our video game.
In The House of Hikmah, each level is based on a different scholar from the Islamic Golden Age. The puzzles and world-building were designed around what the scholar studied or was known for. Ismail al-Jazari’s level features intricate, water-powered machinery that makes you feel as if you’re exploring the clock he designed in 1206 AD.
For example, the dual dragons that appear on the wall are directly based on the dragons from al-Jazari’s manuscript. To ensure they would fit within the environment art, we created illustrated decals that could be easily applied in Unreal Engine.
The elephant motif also appears multiple times in the House of Hikmah. We designed al-Jazari’s Syphon to suck water up through a giant elephant’s trunk. The water powers the machines that our main character, Maya, must repair. His mechanical arm also includes the animals, materials, and colours that were present in the designs for the Elephant Clock and some of his other inventions.
This is just one of many ways the scholars of the Islamic Golden Age contributed to The House of Hikmah.
