We have no time to say goodbye so let us not call it that.
Story overview
We have no time to say goodbye so let us not call it that.
This is a tragic narrative video game about the generation and parting of emotions. The character of the story is a robot living in the 2090s. In this era, robots were created by humans to perform tasks given by humans and were set to not have the ability to perceive emotions.
However, she woke up in the dark one day and found that she was executed on a sleeping mission, and the city was empty. A clue was drawn from the announcement that because of the nuclear accident caused by mankind three years ago, mankind has almost all perished, and the robots have also moved out of the city.
Through the exploration of the surrounding environment, she found traces of the master’s life in the basement. After seeing the letter left by the master, she learned that the master had contracted cancer due to nuclear energy, and his organs began to decline. He may be dead or seeking the treatment method. Unable to face the parting from her, he set a 3-year dormant period for her program.
An emotion suddenly emerged in her mind, facing the parting, facing the choice, facing the new self. This is a feeling she has never had before, maybe this is the embryonic form of love.
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What went wrong？
Exploration of tools for expressive techniques
First of all, after playing the narrative game what remains of Edith Finch that there is no second work in my mind at present, I was attracted by its excellent interactive text setting, which is mainly because of its artistic expression. Think of the text as part of the plot and put it in the scene, so that the player can be more integrated into the plot dialogue through the first-person perspective.
I hope that the text of my game can have such an interactive experience, so I am looking for a way to implement it in Unity. Obviously, although Fungus is very expressive as a 2D narrative dialogue, it cannot meet my needs. After looking for a lot of Unity plugins, I found that it is still difficult to implement, and I am also good at writing Unreal blueprints, so I finally chose Unreal as the development engine for my game, and it is also the development of what remains of Edith Finch`s engine.
Sound processing
In my game design, the player can manipulate the character to move. I think it is actually a better choice to add dubbing at this time, which will make the player more immersed in the plot. Because of the time, it’s too late to dub. (Yes, the only way to solve it I thought is to dub by myself.) Such interactive content with text and no narration is incomplete in my opinion.
Tragic plot
Before preparing for this game, I watched a lot of tragic film and television works to find inspiration and studied their lens language and shooting techniques. But I found that it is difficult to create a tragic plot by myself, and it is even more difficult to present it in the medium of games. This is a huge challenge.
Because I am creating a 3D game, the player can control the movement and direction of the character by himself. This requires guiding the player to carry out the next operation to promote the plot, and the emotional rendering of the tragedy is also very difficult if it is reflected in the background music. Too obvious. My idea is to express through changes in the character’s emotional line, but this requires a lot of life practice.
What went well?
Immersive gaming experience
Immersive game experience has always been a direction of my game design research and exploration, especially in narrative games, immersion will greatly enhance the player’s empathy and sense of substitution. It is very interesting to pass on my own emotions to the players. I think this item is second only to the story in narrative games.
If we want to make the game more immersive, the most important thing is to understand the player’s real feelings and understand what the player wants to get. Follow the user’s habits to better guide them. In numerical games, players only pursue data; in most female games, players are more after artistic effects. In narrative games, what the player needs is to become the character and understand his or her or its mood. At this time, the first-person-character game may be more suitable, but in my game, I hope that the player understands not the robot’s thoughts, but the process of the robot’s emotions, so I hope that the player is the person who watches this story and at the same time integrates into the story. (So, I chose the third-person-character)
Gameplay
For many story-oriented narrative games, the most difficult thing is how to make them more game-like. Because if the player’s operation is not very closely related to the promotion of the plot, it will even affect the plot and narrative experience.
In order to increase the gameplay of this narrative game, I increase the gameplay of understanding mysteries.