Ongoing Decisions & Collabrative Process
Ye and I formed a two-person team, and we shared an interest in how best to tell a story through games.
After communicating with each other about the directions and themes we want to explore in this project, we decided on two directions:
️ 1) Fictional storytelling techniques, such as narrative and character design techniques, to tell a story about a specific theme in an interactive game.
️ 2) Use stage design to tell the story in the game environment.
Research and Materials
We decided that I would take the lead on how to present the story to the player as a whole, and Ye would design one of the main scenes.
The former includes interactive storytelling, the order in which the player is exposed to different parts of the story, and other storytelling techniques.
The latter involves building discrete stage scenes into the characters’ dreams to present the player with fragments of the story.
The final themes of the story includes: feudal superstition, confinement, mental illness and other similar elements, and it is expected to be deleted and changed in the later stage. Due to the comprehensive time and rigor of the presentation, some of them may be beyond our ability.
Game Type
The game will have 3 levels, the most basic of which is the beginning, progression, and end of the story, with the decision to add more levels later if possible.
The type of game is similar to a walking simulator in that the player has the ability to pick up, observe, interact, gaze, etc., and before deciding on these basic movement modes, I considered the need to include squats, sprints, movement speed, and a few other features. It was decided that the player would be able to walk, walk fast, gaze and interact, but not squat, because there was no gameplay involved.
Models & System Templates
With that in mind, we used the Horror Engine template on UE4, which provides a number of highly customizable packaging features such as walk/dash, button/lighting systems, and so on. At the same time, UE4 and the template system that encapsulates this functionality can also save us a lot of time in coding and level logic thinking about the story itself and how the scene behaves.
Critical Reflections
Our topics include themes such as feudalism and superstition, as well as the unique visual element of stage design. I think it all depends on how we design the setting and lighting. But initially we thought we could put these in later in the workflow, so we didn’t fiddle with them too early, mainly because we knew we would never be able to tweak them all at once to a point where we were completely happy, and that would take a lot of time up front.
Collaboration
We haven’t been able to reach a complete consensus on how to work together, and that’s caused us a lot of trouble.
Ye decides the main direction of the story, but she also wants to be personally involved in the design of the setting. In my opinion, I was mainly responsible for the framing of the level and the final presentation of the content, as well as the practical application of story writing skills.
Because of the intersection of our work, there are inevitable conflicts of decision when we collaborate, such as how to decide which topics to cover, which topics are not suitable for presentation, and whether our understanding of these topics is basically the same.
I think these discussions took a while, but each time they moved in a more consistent direction, and they were a lesson for me.
Overall game flow
The three scenes of the game represent three acts:
1) Nora’s room
You wake up in the middle of the night in the attic of a dingy little house in a dead wood forest. Outside the window was a dark path, thick fog, dim street lamps, and a dirt path that led nowhere.
This is Nora’s room, and Nora has been cooped up in this attic room since she was a child, never stepping out of it. Nora is imprisoned there by her mother in order to “protect” her from the people of deadwood Town (because Nora’s appearance is so remarkable, and the people here have a certain religious fervour for children with such appearance).
In this scenario, the player wakes up in the middle of the night, learning Nora’s fragmentary information through objects in her room, and soon after, her mother knocks on the door. The player is told that Nora will be severely punished if her mother finds her awake in the middle of the night. Rapid, irregular knocking on the door also forces players to go to bed early…
2) In dreams, players can get a close look at a number of scenes that contain elements of stage design, and these stylistic little boxes contain stories about Nora.
3) After crossing the dream, the player finds himself back in the deadwood forest, only this time in front of a small lake at the end of the misty path.
Only then did the player realize that he was not playing Nora, but Nora’s brother. Nora is drowned in the lake, and his brother is guilty of it, this series of scenes are brother’s nightmare.
We didn’t get to the final submission here either. It also lacks some important information:
Why did Nora drown in the lake?
What role did the brother play in Nora’s death?
Why on earth did Mother lock Nora up?
And what kind of person is Nora?
Playtesting
The playtesting went smooth generally. And the test scene is the 2nd one, which bring us some basic questions for the design:
1) If we want to play lights and fog in the scene and try to maximaze the effect, we have to balance the final quality of present when it runs in different computers, screens, even towards different people with disabilities on recognizing objects, or they might miss lots of the details.
2) We have to do some work to improve our guidance for the players.
For example, in order to make players pick up the book in the center, we use the light(simple but effective).
After picking up the books, the door with a light bolt in distance will show up. Even if you don’t pick up the books, it will too, as long as players walk forward. And other directions will be blocked by air walls.
Also, the light and the dirty road are also for the clearer guidance..
More details are in the games, and I might forgot some of the thoughts that I haven’t taken notes of.
Enjoy XD.