APD Week 1- Play and Self [Angel and Demon]

Sdust - Angel and Demon

A simple 2D walking simulator game about Angel and Demon in people's heart.

Theme: Play & Self

Context:

This concept comes from my childhood experience. Sometimes when I’m facing a choice, I will hear some voices that tell me to do or not to do something. Some of the voices are selfish and some of them are selflessness. This always been used in some movies or animations and those voices have been drawing as demon and angel. I believe everyone have similar experience and people like me must have question “Who is the real myself”.

The other inspiration is I found people afraid to show their true self in real world. People always do something they don’t want to because they afraid other’s criticism. They put mask on their face, sometimes even they are crying, they still show other people smile. They only time they can take off the mask is playing in the game. No one knows what they did in game and they can release the pressures. The concept of this game is building many events, situation that people will meet in real world and give people chance to chose what they really want.

The gameplay referenced a game called "And everything started to fall" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLmT5wE0fSg). It is a platform jumping game about whole life of a man. In this game, player will be asked to make choice in some points. For example when the character get into school, player must choose a path from "Hard study" and "Play with bad student". I got inspiration from this.

Method

Used Unity engine to build the game and draw all artworks by meself.

Response

After I started the project, I designed a story background firstly. The main story is about a day of a child - Wake up -> Go to school -> Study -> After school -> Do homework or Play -> Sleep. While limited by time, I decided to stop at Study phase. Then I added decisions to the rest 3 phases.

Wake up phase is the easiest phase to design. I can hear the demon voice everyday morning even now and it is very hard to wake up. So I want player feel tired in waking up as well. I set a waking up bar in the left side. Player must keep hitting Space in a very fast frequency to charge the bar and during this time, the bar keep decreasing as well. This simulates struggling of waking up.

I want player spend time on other things rather than just go to school. To make the game real, I want player sometimes be forced to chose the voice they not prefer. So I put a disabled person on the way to school. Angel will ask you to help him and Demon will tells you not to help. If player spent lots of time on jumping before, they will have no time to help disabled person(Camera keep moving up as the time losing). So in this situation, player have to leave disable person.

Study phase is simple. To simulate teaching, some formula will falling from top of classroom. Angel advices player listen to the class so player must keep going left and right to catch those formula. If player decide to listen to Demon, they can just stop next to door and ignore those formula.

Reflection

The idea of PLAY and SELF in this game is more likes testing, exploring and digging.

Player will explore the real character of their selves during play this game.

In the real world, people rarely show their true selves. They put mask on their face, they make some decisions they don't like. They smile although their heart is crying. People afraid to show their true selves to other.

While in game, they play the game by selves, no one knows what they did in game and no one can critical them. So they can do anything and make any decision they really want in game.  

This is how PLAY different with reality. It gives people opportunity to do something they afraid to do in real world and the idea of this game also helps them to find what the true self of their selves. 

Control

A/S - Move left/right

W - Jump

Space - Waking up

11/3/2020 Edit: Add a video since the game can only run on Windows

11/3/2020 Edit: Fix the format of description.

Downloads:

Download File: angeldemonresources.zip
Download File: buildversion-angelanddemon.zip