Studio 2 - Week 2 (OLD POST)

So this week my project continued to develop and there was definitely some refinement, though I am still waiting for my lightbulb moment and I sense I may be forcing it a bit too hard.

I sat down after a bit too much coffee on Monday and wrote the beginnings of a script related to the war theme I developed in the first week. What came out was a story about a brother and sister who are room mates in Melbourne and who react to the news of a global act of war occuring and the fallout from that which quickly results in protests, a major political spill in Australia, and the emergence of conscription into the Australian Army. I decided it was a good idea to just write and write and write as the ideas were coming, knowing I would be able to edit it all later. What I have from all of that is really just a bit of a sad mess, to be honest. I don’t think I’ve really managed to nail the tone of the story, and that is probably because I just don’t fully understand what the story is that I want to tell. I am also really struggling with scoping the whole project; I want to be super ambitious, but I also have to keep remembering that I have a lot of Unity stuff to learn and should therefore keep the narrative side manageable.

Regarding the visual and technical side, I *thought* I had figured out a visual style that would work well, but when I put it together into this prototype video: https://vimeo.com/581032406/945a3baca9 I realised that it looked extremely strange. And I don’t HATE it, in fact I may come to like it, but it’s not quite what I pictured. 

In terms of programming, it turns out my “simple idea” actually may be pretty difficult to implement. My plan had been to make it so the “player” would just tap on the screen to advance the story. So, if you watch my prototype video above, it would be like: tap once and the image appears, tap again and the text appears, etc. Jadd told me that putting all that into a Unity engine is possible but could get complicated quickly if I make it the way I want to. He suggested firstly that I shorten the script, and that I also use fewer images and focus more on the text appearing/disappearing. He also asked me why I was bothering to make the project interactive, and I replied that I had initially conceived of there being the occasional moment where the player has to choose a certain path or answer. Again, this would just be more work, but I feel that even with minimal interaction the game could feel a whole lot more engaging and would improve replayability.

Probably the highlight of the week was binge-watching full runthrough videos of some of Angela He’s games. OMG they are amazing. I had played I woke up next to you again last year and remember thinking it was v cool, but then didn’t investigate it much further. So I revisited that and also discovered Missed Messages, You Left Me and others. Missed Messages especially was extremely exciting. I found the tone to be very close to what I want for my project, and the visual palette and sound design are incredible. MM also features some choice for the player but it’s not super invasive. It’s always great to discover new work that really inspires you.

All in all, a pretty good week, but I still feel fairly overwhelmed by everything and think that possibly stepping away from everything for a day or so will be the best approach to avoid getting burnt out.