Narrative Game 01. - Prototype!

After the Android project, the new topic we have to tackle is a narrative game! And in this case, not just the topic new, but the team members too and I am excited about the working flows with them.

My blog posts are mainly focused on the prototype part of this project, so if you are more curious about other aspects of it, I recommend you to check out the other team members' blog posts about it: Konstantin.

Pitch: "You play Detective Trowel, who has been called to investigate the death of Bloomsted Council-head Col Tulip. The autopsy came back as a heart attack, but some of the locals have suspicions of foul play. Investigate the town and locals to deduce the true nature of the situation, uncovering the hidden story behind the case as you relive the interactions with the townsfolk through Trowel’s diorama recreations and cassette tapes of his interviews." - from our game pitch

With this project, I have surprisingly less amount of work when it comes to the planning phase because my team was kind enough to provide me the rough details so I was able to start working on it.

Miro - Different game scenes and phase plans with clear visual and text explanation

The first task I tackled is the camera system so the players are able to navigate around the table. My solution was to put virtual cameras (Using Cinemachine - Unity) around the scene and just simply switch between them when the player interacts with any interactable object on the scene. Additionally, for clarity on which objects on the table are interactable, I added an outline to it which shows up when the mouse is on the object:

The main part of the project is the middle section, where the diorama is, and when the player interacts with it, the camera zooms in and offers more options for the player to choose from. At the moment it is just placeholder icons and only visual, but the second iteration will give more idea about what the gameplay mechanics are.

The player is able to interact with the newspaper (top right corner), which zooms the camera above it, and later when we have textures, the player can read the texts on it (the current idea is to read the story summary so far).

And the last functionality is the map, where the player can switch between the dioramas and opens up new NPC (non-player characters) to talk with. Every diorama represents a segment of the town.

After another week, here is the new iteration of the prototype:

The cigarette got a functionality too (left-upper corner), which shows the player's health or the amount of tries the player has to guess the part of the mystery. When the player had a bad choice, the detective lits up a cigarette to relieve his stress and continues the investigation with a calm mind.

And with this new prototype version, the diorama characters are expanded and show more options:

- Speak: Opens up a dialogue with that character so the player to ask questions about the case. (Not yet implemented)

- Inspect: Gives a summary of the character. (Not yet implemented)

- Show Object: The player is able to show objects or clues that they find around the map or from other characters and ask the characters if they know something about it. This is going to be one of the guessing mechanics and potentially gain stress (loss of health) if the wrong item or clue is presented to the character.

And additionally, a map button is provided (with a placeholder icon) so the player does not have to memorize any buttons or shortcuts, just navigate with the mouse.

This is it for the first post.

Thank you for reading!