Animated Narrative - Week 8 - Interactive Treatment

Weekly Documentation

For week 8, I decided to give an interactive treatment to the mind-map that I created for week 7. This interactive treatment lays out the things mentioned in the mind-map more clearly and in order.

By using the interactive treatment format, I was able to think about the ideas that I had and build it into a more finessed structure. I was able to think about what I wanted the game to have and how I wanted the storyline to progress. Creating an interactive treatment allowed me to share my idea with others more clearly, than what I could using the mind-map.

For the reference on the structure of an interactive treatment, I used the guide provided to us in the Canvas site. I used the ‘Overview’ section to explain the storyline, the ‘Explanation’ section to explain the game mechanics and the ‘Treatment’ section to create a small gameplay experience.

By examining the interactive treatment document, I was able to explain the core mechanics and other mechanics of the game more clearly to the readers, to give a brief backstory of the game, and to let the readers experience the gameplay through a short treatment.  

Interactive Treatment

Overview

Before Dawn is a Metroidvania puzzle and combat platformer 2D game based on Celtic Myth. The game is heavily narrative-driven and follows a linear story, allowing players to fight enemies and solve puzzles along the way.

The main character lives in the middle of the forest in a glade with her only guardian. She has never left the comfort of the glade and only interacts with her guardian, listening to whatever they say. The character has certain rules she needs to follow like no leaving the glades without the guardian, feeding the animals, or taking care of the chores inside the house.

Her guardian sometimes travels to the nearby village located on the perimeter of the forest. When the guardian is gone the character must stay inside until they return. The guardian always tells her how long they will be gone for and have never been back late. Her guardian wears an amulet with 3 gems encrusted in it. The character doesn’t know what the amulet does but knows that it’s precious to her guardian and they never take it off.

One morning, the guardian leaves for the village to gather some stuff and leaves a note saying they’ll be back before the night falls, but they never return. The next morning, the character looks all over the glades for their guardian but can’t find them anywhere. She goes to the end of the glade and finds her guardian’s amulet. All the gems are missing except one.

After finding the broken amulet, the character starts to worry about her guardian. She wears the amulet around her neck and heads towards the forest to find her guardian.

Explanation

The core mechanic of the game is going to be using the guardian’s amulet to solve puzzles and combat. Every gem in the amulet grants different abilities to the character and the user must go through the forest looking for these gems to find the character’s guardian. The user starts with one gem at the start of the game. The abilities that the gems enable are:

1. A ‘Vine Rope’ that can be used as a navigational element to move the character around the forest. By swinging through strong branches or pulling loose objects around the forest to create new pathways.
2.  A ‘Rift’ that can be used to summon portals to teleport the character or enemies by a short distance.
3. A ‘Steal Spell’ that can be used to absorb the spell of different kind of enemies for a short duration.

By using the above 3 abilities as well as other basic mechanics like standard movement, jump, double jump, wall-climbing, and a projectile weapon, the user has to navigate the forest and explore different levels, defeat creatures and bosses along the way, and talk to friendly creatures to gather clues on how to progress.

Treatment

The user starts at the heart of the forest in the glade. It’s bright and sunny outside and the user can see and move around the glades to try out basic game mechanics. The user has the amulet around her neck and can hear a faded sound coming from within the forest. To the left of the user, there is a door to enter her house and to the right is the pathway that leads to the forest. The user can decide to go either way.

If the user goes inside the house, the faded sound stops. There is food on the table, and everything looks clean and tidy. There is a note on the table beside the food, that reads ‘Will be back by evening’. The user can move and interact with things around the house.

If the user decides to follow to go right and follow the faded voice, the character enters the forest. The sound gets clearer as the character moves right and goes deeper into the forest. There are a lot of trees around the forest and not a lot of sunlight gets in. There are spots of rays of sunlight throughout the pathway that the user can use to see what’s around. The user can keep on walking or running right, and occasionally jump ledges to follow the sound. The more the character moves towards that direction, the clearer the voice gets. The user can also stop moving and explore the surrounding area to find items that the character can interact with.

After going through the forest for a while, the user sees a wisp near a big tree in the forest. As the character gets closer to the wisp, the user finds out that the voice they have been hearing is the wisp guiding the user towards her. The wisp fills the user in on what is going on, gives the user advice on how they can solve the problem and be reunited with her guardian again.

Downloads:

Download File: interactive-treatment.docx