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I created the player experience script below which outlined the scenes, lines and interactions in the experience for the team to refer to during development.
The whole and broken glass model I made in Maya and used a transparent material in Unity
The 3D model of the curtains I made with Maya
The grey box model with asset placement. I made the floor material with Substance Designer, modelled the bed, window frame and seat at the foot of the bed
About - A jealous maid takes drastic action when she discovers the Lord of the Manor, whom she is in love with and works for, is due to be married.
Timeline - 3 weeks
Roles- 3D Artist and Producer
Tools - Unity / Adobe Substance Designer / Autodesk Maya
Platform - Oculus Quest 2
Contributions - Designed the interactions and wrote the dialogue.
- I organised team meetings, assigned tasks throughout the development process and made sure everyone was united in the vision of the game
- Worked on the level design through creating grey box 3D models of the bed, dimensions of the room, broken glass and helped plan the asset placement in the room.
- Designed the texture of the floor using Adobe Substance Designer
Prompt - Create an interactive narrative experience
Early on, we decided we wanted to make a tense, potential horror game inspired by Hideo Kojima's P.T. We inspired by the action taking place in 2 areas and the environment and mechanics telling the story. It meant we could keep the scope relatively small. We also liked the use of the radio as a means to give context in different scenes and eventually revealed to have had a significant role in the murders that have taken place.
At first, we thought we could make a detective story. The player interacts with the environment and each time they do, a piece of the story is revealed, much like We Live Here. The player would then piece together, using the information they have gained, to solve a crime. However, we soon learnt that writing detective fiction is very difficult and not achievable in the 2 week timeline.
After some more brainstorming, we became intrigued by the possibility of getting the player inside the head of someone who is mentally unstable. We eventually came to like the idea of a serving woman working in a Victorian manor who is in love with the Lord of the Manor. When she discovers that the Lord is getting married, in a fit of rage and jealousy, she murders the bride. We thought it could be an interesting as this serving woman could never marry the Lord due to social rules at the time.
As we developed the story and interactions, we decided that each interaction should have significant both to tell the story and enable the player to understand the character they are inhabiting. As I was mainly responsible for writing the dialogue and outlining the interactions for the programmers to implement, each line and mechanic needed to reflect this and had to be as intuitive as possible.
We decided to remove the player's ability to move freely around the space. This design decision was made because we thought we could tell a tighter, more focussed story if the player's attention was more controlled. This meant they knew exactly what they to do at each moment. We also thought it suited the story's overall theme; you will face and the consequences of your actions, no matter your intentions. Both the player and character are funnelled inexorably towards the game's conclusion. They are Condemned.
Post Mortem
- An important lesson I learnt as Producer, was the importance of making sure everyone is unified in the vision of the game as early as possible. Early in the process, ideas were often confused as new ones were rapidly generated by each member of the team. It was only when I created the script above, that we were able to work as a team towards a united goal.
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