Pieces of Home

A personal memory, developed into a playable visual system.

I am developing Pieces of Home under Ait Adrar Studios. This restoration puzzle draws on Moroccan zellige and a personal memory of collecting broken tiles. The work connects geometric construction, material development, and interaction: a mosaic built to be understood through its individual pieces.

Pieces of Home Fountain gameplay with a blue, ivory, green, and red zellige mosaic and repair tray

Fountain gameplay — the mosaic and repair tray in their complete portrait composition.

01The Origin

Pieces of Home began with a memory of my parents’ rooftop in Morocco: collecting and sorting pieces of zellige that had fallen from a dome. The fragments carried the colour and craft of the place, even when separated from their original pattern.

That memory became the premise for a restoration puzzle. The visual starting point is real tilework: shaped ceramic, glazed surfaces, exposed clay, and the relationship between an individual piece and the larger composition it belongs to.

Collected green zellige fragments with exposed clay edges on a tiled surface — Collected zellige — glaze, clay, and irregular edges as a material reference.

02Building the Pattern

The patterns are constructed geometrically in Plasticity before becoming individual game pieces. The construction view makes the underlying relationships visible: repeated angles, interlocking shapes, and the negative spaces between tiles.

Moving from the complete pattern to separate tiles connects composition with production. The workflow carries that geometry through 3ds Max for mesh preparation and into Unity for interaction. Tile identity, orientation, and placement have to remain consistent across those stages; the pattern is both an image and a system of parts.

Plasticity construction view showing intersecting geometric lines for a zellige pattern — Pattern construction in Plasticity — the geometry behind the interlocking composition.

Early Plasticity tile development showing individual blue and white geometric pieces — Early tile development — a complete pattern resolved into individual shapes.

Pattern study in Plasticity — repeating tile shapes around a shared centre.

03Crafting the Look

The material reference shows more than colour. Glaze catches light differently from exposed ceramic, while small surface variations prevent the tiles from reading as perfectly uniform manufactured blocks.

The game’s material system separates glazed surfaces, raw ceramic, and the setting around them. Geometry, bevels, lighting, and shader response work together to give each piece a physical presence. In the Fountain view, reflections, surface variation, and tile depth give the pattern its ceramic character.

Photographic reference of worn blue and white glazed zellige with visible grout and cracks — Glazed-zellige reference — colour variation, reflected light, and visible joins.

04Making It Playable

Restoration gives the visual system a practical purpose. Players examine, rotate, flip, and place pieces, working between the mosaic and a repair tray. Silhouettes and orientation matter because the artwork has to support those actions as well as hold together as a composition.

The portrait layout keeps the pattern and tray within one continuous view. The production captures document the transition from constructed tile shapes to an interactive scene, where missing pieces, surface depth, and the surrounding frame become part of reading the puzzle.

Early Pieces of Home Unity prototype with a star-centered mosaic, loose tiles, and an orange repair tray containing fragments. — Early Unity prototype — the mosaic, loose tiles, and separate repair workspace.

05Iteration & Current State

I’m continuing to develop Pieces of Home. These images trace selected stages from physical reference and geometric construction to Fountain gameplay.

Early Unity gameplay development showing a blue and white mosaic with missing tiles and loose pieces — Early Unity development — tile geometry and glazed materials tested in an interactive scene.

Created by Mouhsine Adnani under Ait Adrar Studios.

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