Nonlinear Narrative

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: Nonliner Narratives, Noninear Narrateves, Nonlinear Narrative, Nonlnear

So, what the game is conceptually and what the game is actually are pretty divergent. More divergent than I would have liked anyways. Ideally, the game is about compulsions and how a person can pick up different sorts of compulsions…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: Hiding in Plain Sight

Over the course of this semester, as I came to terms with my own social anxiety, I decided to center my game around my new understandings of anxious feelings in social spaces. I wanted to convey these through some simple…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: A Short History of Goblins

Elliot Nye May 15th, 2019 A Short History of Everything that is Goblins is a non-linear adventure game I made about goblins. It is a pretty silly game, based on lore I invented about a nation of goblins cursed by…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: Down Post Mortem

My game is about Kaira making friends in a swampy wasteland while on her quest to regain her memories and find out why she lost them in the first place. The game is right now basically a walking simulator. It…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: City Watch Post-Mortem

Background City Watch

My game is about a girl who has to decide her own path in life.  She starts out in the City Watch, which is where she currently works as a knight for the city.  She is supposed to prevent and stop crime from happening.  She is assigned a major task, to find and take down the thieves’ guild in the city.  A problem with that, however, is that she is a kleptomaniac.  She has to infiltrate the thieves’ guild while struggling not to steal stuff.  Or she can give in to temptation and steal a lot of stuff.  It is the players choice to decide whether they want Lena to stay true to the CIty Watch or steal things and truly become a member of the thieves’ guild.  The characters in the game can also help influence her choice.  The captain, Morgan is very kind and caring to all her members; she treats them like family.  And Rob, the person in charge of the thieves’ guild, isn’t all bad.  He helps people who are in need and takes care of orphaned kids.  He provides people with a family as well.  So, the ultimate goal of the game is for Lena to decide whether she wants to stay with the City Watch and demolish the thieves’ guild, or leave her place at the City Watch and join the Thieves’ Guild.

Lena can walk around and talk to people in each level of the game.  There are many items to buy, pick up/steal, interact with, and people to talk to.  Depending on who is around, when Lena steals objects, dialogue options will change with Morgan and Rob.  If a knight is around, Lena will lose favorability with Morgan, but if a thief is around, Lena will gain more favorability with Rob.  To get closer with specific characters, their approval rating will have to be a certain level, so stealing items is a necessity, as well as doing heroic and just quests.  Heroic quests will improve Morgan’s approval rating without necessarily decreasing Rob’s.

The McGuffin in the game is the sword that Lena has.  It was given to her by Morgan earlier on in her life and it serves as her connection to the City Watch.  It changes/ disappears altogether depending on specific actions Lena takes throughout the game.

The abstraction in my game is how there is not a set path to follow, there are different options on how to progress the story, and there are multiple things to do at once.  This ties in with the nonlinearity of the game.  There is not one way to play the game.  Each playthrough of the game would be different because there are different side quests to take, different things to steal, different outcomes of the game.  Nothing in the game follows one path.  The forward and backward loops also tie into the nonlinearity.  The loops correlate to the approval ratings; doing a good thing will generally increase your approval with Morgan but decrease approval with Rob, and vice versa.  Depending on how the player chooses to play the game doing a good/bad thing will make one side of the game easier while making the other side harder.

My game says a lot through a little by using environmental storytelling.  The way places and characters look says a lot about them.  The outfits I chose for Henri and Morgan tie them together at the City Watch making them look like part of a team.  Lena’s outfit has the same boots as Henri and Morgan, but Lena has a much more casual look about her to make her blend into an average person.  The thieves don’t really where armor because they don’t need to.  They have more casual clothing to help them blend in because they aren’t supposed to stand out.  A thief that stands out is not a good thief.  That’s why Lena starts out with basic clothing.  She can get armor later in the game to help add to her defense, but her look should stay fairly basic.  Items within the environment also help to enhance the setting.  The setting is a mix between fantasy-medieval and realistic-modern.  There are items scattered around like smartphones and electronics.  There are working lights, but there aren’t cars.  There are typical RPG style vendors where Lena can buy and sell certain goods.  And the factions- City Watch and Thieves’ Guild are inherently fantasy tropes.

The nonlinearity of my game helps expand the theme and story because the purpose of the game is to choose your own path.  The player should feel free to follow whatever road they want to, and by not having a strict storyline, it allows the player to do what they want.  The ability to be free may also change how the player feels throughout the game.  By learning more about one person may affect how they want to play the game.  Discovering different parts of the game builds onto the world and influences the player’s decision without forcing them to do anything.

I think I have used the power of minimalism within my game.  I tried to give life to the environments and character through how they look without having anything be too cluttering.  The look of people and places should be simple but telling.

In a way the player can see what is important.  They know from the beginning what one option for the ultimate goal of the game is.  And they can soon learn the importance of one side or the other side.

HenriFace

Henri’s face

knight sprite

Henri’s sprite

Lena Front Sprite

Lena’s sprite

Morgan Sprite

Morgan’s Sprite

Lena Face

Lena’s Face

Morgan Face

Morgan’s Face

FullSizeRender (1)

original sketch for Lena

FullSizeRender

Lena’s sword given to her by Morgan

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives — Water Warrior

My game is about a woman in a blue dress named Watershed (pictured in the center), whose goal is to defeat a bunch of ninjas to get back the money for, ironically, her water bill. This is ironic because Watershed,…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: A Musician’s Quest, Post-Mortem

My game is about the story of a struggling musician going on an adventure to play a show at the end. Throughout the way, he collects musical notes to improve his ability to play and must have a minimum score…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: House H(a)unters – Post-Mortem

  My game is about a pair of ghost hunting twins named Becca and Casper Radley. Their producer has informed them that they must raise the funds for their next season on their own. Becca hatches a plot to convince…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: Postmortem — Love, Marriage, and Space Pirates Post-Mortem

This game follows the story of the protagonist, named Alessa, who joins a league of Space Pirates to earn money quickly to pay off her debts and pay for her wedding. It centers around the internal struggle that she has…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: The Protagonist

For my protagonist, I wanted to design a character that would not stand out too much and could blend into her surroundings.  She had to be different from everyone else, but not be too different.  I sketched a few different…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: The Protagonist

My characters were limited by my artistic ability, but this led to a much more simpler and abstract design that I was influenced from watching the stick figure animations in my childhood. A lot of the design for the main…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: Characters for Hollie, Girl Detective

When working on this project, I was inspired in style by old flash games like Riddle School, the idea of children in adult situations like South Park, and a girl solving a mystery that the police should themselves like Nancy…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: The Protagonist

My protagonist is a woman named Alessa Solaris, who lives in a futuristic society where human space travel has been achieved. In this universe, the resources on Earth have been completely diminished and humans have taken to gathering resources in…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: The Protagonist

My Protagonist is named Kaira Barnabus. Kaira lives in a post apocalyptic world that suffered catastrophic flooding several decades before Kaira was born and is filled with various forms of fauna that can talk and have formed various societies. Kaira has…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: The Protagonist

The protagonist for my game design project is Becca Radley. She is a 24 year-old professional ghost hunter with a predisposition for off-the-wall plans. When her producers demand that she and her brother/co-host Casper provide the funds for their next…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: Heretic Postmortem

  Game Design and Non-Linearity  Heretic is a 2D PRG that follows a young girl living a barren village. Resources are slim, the soil is untenable, and the villagers only think of their own needs for survival. The villagers live in…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: The Strength Needed Postmortem

The game The Strength Needed was a semester of fun, strife, and some sleepless night but by and large a wonderful experience and vastly informative for the next projects I inevitably wish to pursue next semester. The game in its…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: The Strength Needed

The game I set out to do this semester was focused primarily on building on a lot of the work I put into the third Paper Prototype I did. This game was meant to focus on the one line that…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: Migration

My goal for “Migration” is to create a 2D side-scrolling RPG based on exploration and interaction. I’m aiming for a whimsical, fantastical aesthetic reminiscent of pages from children’s books. I will express the narrative purely through visuals and won’t rely…

Game Studio: Nonlinear Narratives: Into The Dark

The game I finally made is now called Into The Dark.  The goal of this game is to explore the world I created and to defeat the boss at the end of the game.  There are times were the player…