APD - Week 8 - Play & Time

Theme: Play and Time

Method: To create a pitch for a short game that utilizes heavy timeskips to show the consequences of a player's actions, and the changing relationship of characters over time.

Context: Mostly inspired by Rumu, a game about being a sentient roomba who cleans up while their owner is away. The changing placement of spills and stains between days implies a lot about what their owners are like, and paints a rather troubling image.

Partly inspired by The Novelist, a game in which a ghost whispers advice to sleeping people, and players see the results of these actions.

Both games utilize lots of timeskips, and players must figure out what happened while they were gone - and how long they were gone for - by observing changes in the environment.

Response:

Nobody's Home is a short adventure game about messing with people's stuff while they're out.

Players take the role of someone (a thief, ghost, nosy neighbor - whatever) who has snuck into the the living room owned by two people they do not know. The owners are not home, and will never be home while the player is around... however, the player only has the opportunity to do one thing before they must leave again.

Players can look around the room and observe things to learn more about the lives of the homeowners. However, they can only touch or take one object before they must leap back out the window from whence they came. For example; a player can read all the post-it notes on the refrigerator door without consequence, but opening the refrigerator door to see whats inside will force them to leave soon after.

Whatever it is the player chooses to do will remain when they leave the room (i.e. - the fridge door will remain open). After the player leaves, the game cuts to the next day, when the player next returns.

How much time has passed since the player last visited is reflected by the placement of objects in the room. Usually, this is relatively minor; a jacket may be left hanging over a chair, laundry may be piled up in the corner on a saturday, a square may have been crossed off on a calendar on the wall. These things tell us about the weekly routines of the characters, as well as what problems they might be facing.

However, performing particularly drastic actions may result in additional changes. Some are immediately obvious - leaving the fridge door open may result in a passive-aggressive note being left on the kitchen table about how all the food went off. Others may be more subtle, or may take several more days to appear.

Over time, players learn more about the two characters who inhabit the building and what's troubling them. They can then use their one action a day to either steer them towards their goals, or try and drive them apart from each other.