Game Design

Development Process

Idea process:

At our first meeting, we started talking about inspirations and references of platform games sharing each other's opinions of the gameplay experiences, mechanism, interaction, and design through google doc. One of the games everyone liked was Toy Factory. it is illustrated in black and white and a nonhuman character, a defective doll with the reborn mother's soul tries to return to her daughter. Also, we liked a journey-style experience when one of the members shared Old Med Journey. it is a beautifully illustrated journey game the player helps the old man to find the right path to meet his wife in hospital and daughter. Sharing references helped us narrow down our rough game theme and experience and design direction: illustrated design and journey style game experience.  After that, we also kept exploring in platformer games we have shared, new ones, and John has shared.  

For the second meeting in class, we shared a game, Gris that mainly caught our eyes with the transition from the intro video to the game. It ushers the player seamlessly and immersively to the game and beautiful parallax background. Ruby shared the reincarnation idea that we all liked so we dived into the more specific game concept, experience, and mechanisms with the topic. Sharing our personal and indirect experiences in death helped gather rich ideas and inspiration we can implement in our game. Then we start sketching rough experiences, mechanisms,  and themes at each level. First, the player collects items that trigger regrets. Enemies follow the player evoking bad memories,  hindrances falling down to the player, etc. what experiences and themes should be at each level. We got great ideas from John that when the player endures or avoids when facing obstacles, and reminiscent objects, such as a diary, scrap paper, notes, personal items that could be a good way to keep the player engaged in the context of the game. Then we did research on regrets and death. one of the members read a book that talks about the most common regrets of dying. From the idea, we started looking into people's general thoughts on dying and regrets. In the second meeting, we achieved a well-rounded game design structure even though we did not have grey boxing and game mechanism in unity. we also divided our tasks as well in this meeting. 

Before the third meeting, we found Bardo, an intermediate, transitional, or liminal state between death and rebirth in Buddhism. We integrated Bardo, realms where you have to spend 7 days after death to have a better rebirth into our concept. Instead of 7 days, we decided to take 5 days and implemented a 5-minute time constraint for the play to complete the whole journey.  

Level 1 Memories: recognizing death state  “stayed in touch with loved ones”

Items: leaf and gemstone 

1. Family [ leaf ] is your eternal harbor and dependence, accepting all that you have.

Landscape: Liner and parallax 

Dialogs 

• I regret not saying “I love you” often  
• I regret getting angry at my family. 
• I regret not giving my father more ice cream before he died. 
• I regret not letting my mom know how much I love her.
• I regret I should’ve spent more time with my younger sister

2. Friend [gemstone] Precious friends can bring you value like a gemstone.

Dialogs 

• I regret getting in a huge fight with my best friend and never saying sorry…  I’ve missed you.
• I regret I wasn’t at my best friend’s funeral  
• I should’ve kept in touch with my friend

Level 2 Regrating  “Courage to be myself”  I wish that I had let myself be happier 

Item [Eye] You will be able to see through the eyes of the regret and disenchantment that was once there.

Lanscape: moving down

Dialogs 

• Not being open to things 
• Not taking chances…
• I regret that I didn’t do all the things that I wanted to do like going to acting much earlier. 
• Not following my dreams earlier in life. 
• I wish I knew when I was younger how wonderful I was. 
• Having not appreciated being young when younger. 
• Not listening to myself at times and life when I should've.   

Obstacles: Avoiding shadows (ghosts) as regrets

• The shadows of regrets will floating from side to side
• Shadow will starting chasing the player when it come closer 
• Player will lose 1 life if hit by shadow

Level 3 Accepting “courage to express my feelings”

I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me and the courage to express my feelings

Item [rose] You will learn to accept and embrace the next turn that is as beautiful as a rose and full of hope.

Lanscape: moving up 

Dialogs 

• Chances to speak up for other people being bullied. 
• Not saying sorry more often
• Not saying I really want to say 
• Being frightened of so many things when I was younger. 
• Saying no to things that has a ripple effect in my life
• I do regret that I didn’t think I’d be a good parent.

Obstacles: Avoiding falling rocks 

• With certain range players coming closer, the rocks will start falling
• The Player will lose 1 life if hit by rocks

Playtesting feedback

"Colors and background music collaborate together and remind me of the identity of the soul. Makes me keep exploring like waiting for a favorite tv show. Engaging and encouraging experience that make me reflect"  

Suggested Improvement: 

"In the first scene, different objects don’t integrate into the concept when the soul collides with a ghost it would be fun if it falls down making the sound more interesting in response.  Light effects could be used as reflection responses"