Final deliverable: First Date
Overview
The prompt for this week was Conversation. In this game, the player is on a first date and must find things to talk about without knowing much about the other person. It involves a lot of guessing, but over time the player becomes more knowledgeable and can converse more easily and about bigger things.
Analysis
This project did not go at all as I intended. With the conversation prompt, I wanted to make a game about small talk. My original idea was to convey how small talk could be tedious and tiresome, but a necessary part of society. To show this, I planned to make the player repeatedly carry small blocks and give them to NPCs in order to gain access to new rooms. They would have to do this over and over until the NPC trusted them enough to let them in.
I ran into trouble with this idea. In 2D, this would have required custom animations to show the character moving around. In 3D, the restriction of a static camera forced the play space to be small so the the player could see what was happening. While this was okay, I found that the static camera gave an odd sense of disengagement from what was happening.
I moved to a static scene where the player was instead actually making small talk by choosing mundane items to talk about through UI buttons. Originally this was still in 3D, but I had trouble finding icons and making the conversation look natural. I kept this idea but fell back on my familiar Noun Project. The result was a game about a first date, in which you have no background knowledge about a person but have to find something to talk about.
Ultimately, the part of the game I enjoyed the most was the background animations. I gave the player a simple interaction mechanic, but made the backdrop more than just a static image. Waiters come in and out to serve you drinks and food, and musicians play and sing for you. I’m happy with the way it turned out to be a small moment where the player is focused on a small task, but the world keeps moving around them.
This project was the first time I felt the constraints were problematic. I did work around the static camera requirement, though I wished I could have a moving camera. Conversation without actual written words was tricky to do without being trite. I had ideas about communicating through music or symbols, but they were essentially just placeholders. This prompt has encouraged me to explore narrative games more, especially ones with interesting conversation mechanics like Florence.
Next Steps
This fourth project completes the first iteration of the course. Jack and I will now review the past four weeks and update our plan for the next round of projects.