Play the Build

Team: Eleanor Erceg - Lead Designer, Daniel Fraser - Designer, Jack Kleidon - Designer, Nixon Sok - Programmer, Paolo Quijano - Artist, Hoan Dang Minh - Artist

Tools: Unity, Git, Teams

Tasks: Narrative Design, Narrative Scripting, Mechanics Design, Level Layout/Design, Art (reused models), Texturing (minor), Testing

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This project was created in one week as part of Brackeys Game Jam 2022.1 with the theme 'it is not real'. The design idea to fit the theme was an exploration of depression and how it can alter one's perception of self, represented metaphorically with a changing reality to coincide with their changing mental state.

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Gameplay is a simple first person point and click narrative adventure, with various objects around the room the player can interact with, prompting their character to comment on them. Once everything in the room has been explored the phone will ring leading to a fantasy interlude where they are chased by a monster. At the end of this section the player is sent back to the room, which has subtle differences along with the character's comments, showing their decline.

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There are three iterations of the room, with the level design and writing made to realistically portray depression both literally and metaphorically. A lot of detail was put into the environmental storytelling to that effect, from the work piling up and passion project diminishing, to the disappearance of people in photos expressing the character's feelings of loneliness. The exact wording used to express the character's feelings was very important and written very deliberately to show a slow decent.