I created a paper prototype for the flash fiction story “Possessions” by John Smolens. In the game, the player controls where the Husband goes and collects all the items from each room without running into his ghostly wife. The more items the player has, the more stones you receive.
The player has the option on the map to choose which room to go into first: bedroom, living room, kitchen. In the room that has been chosen, the player must find all the items in that room by walking up to objects in the room. But if the player runs into the ghostly wife, they lose one item which can not be retrieved again after gone. The controls are the arrow keys on the keyboard to move around the room: up, down, left and right.
How to get the stones is returning all the items found in one room to the Everything Must Go room. The player must do this after every room or else they can’t move on.
The McGuffin in this game is how many stones the player has at the end, the more the player has the better. If the player only manages to get half of the items, then the player only gets half the stones at the end of the game.
My use of abstraction in this prototype is not very well since this was my first paper prototype ever. I decided that I would use color on the players character and no color on the ghostly wife to show the difference between alive and dead. The narrative structure of my game would probably be branching. I say branching because you have to go to three different rooms, but always return to the same place you started.
My improvement for this game would have it play out better. Also I would redraw my layout of the game a little better because it was a little confusing to understand, but it was a good starting base.
