PROGETTO USTICA – Steam Release
Progetto Ustica is a free to play 15 minutes exploratory experience that runs on PC/MAC and supports Oculus Rift VR and HTC Vive. The project recreates the main events of the 50 minutes flight of the ITAVIA DC9 shot down from the sky over the Tyrrhenian Sea on June 27th, 1980.
Progetto Ustica aims at keeping alive the memory and the search for the truth, involving also those who do not know anything about what happened that night. This need comes from the fact that the legal process that followed this tragic event faced many obstacles and misdirections over the years. Today is quite clear that the civilian flight had been shot down by a missile. Still, who launched it? That remains a mystery, with the viable chance to be a NATO fighter involved in a covert mission.
Progetto Ustica is conceived and produced by Ivan Venturi, designer, developer and producer of video games, and it is realized with a team of professionals and with the help of Mauro Salvador, game designer and lecturer at the universities of Bologna, Modena and Reggio Emilia.
Progetto Ustica also benefits from the help of Daria Bonfietti and Andrea Benetti of the Victims’ Relatives Association and from the support of Carlo Lucarelli‘s Bottega Finzioni.
The game will be stored in an educational DVD to be diffused for free in junior high and high school, in different versions for different ages.
Progetto Ustica puts the player inside the DC9 shortly after its take off, from a first-person point of view. The player explores its cabin and interacts with objects that unlock additional features:
- new points of view that show what is happening from the perspective of the military aircrafts, a radar vision that encompasses the whole scenario, a lone nocturnal fisherman watching the sky, and more;
- audio transcripts of that night radio communications between the DC9 and the control towers contacted during the flight;
- contextual information on the military activity in the Tyrrhenian Sea, hints on the events of that night and on what followed: investigations, cover-ups, suspicious deaths, and more.
Progetto Ustica is not intended as a scientifically accurate recreation of facts, or as an investigative game that aims at discovering the truth. Progetto Ustica is a game for memory. Some details of the scenario are true, others are plausible. We leave the player the task to further research and not to forget.
