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I composed the following tracks for the Mid Adulthood Room which sees the player in a dark office, an abstract and gloomy environment with no colour. The emotions in the first track, Lonely Office Life, are that of a deeply unhappy and demotivated individual in a mundane job with their condition hanging over them and deeply affecting their self worth.
The next track, Falling Apart, is for when the room falls apart when the player recovers the object. It is particularly dramatic as it represents the character’s mental collapse under the stress and strain of balancing his unhappy working life with dealing with his condition.
I composed the following tracks for the Early Adulthood Room which sees the player make their way through a beautiful forest. In the first track, titled First Love Forest, the mood is happy and relaxed to fit both the natural and peaceful environment and the blossoming relationship of the main character, full of positive wonder and potential and, above all, brimming with young love.
There is also another track, titled Unhappy Household, for when the player enters the house that is situated in this forest. I sought to represent the now melancholic aspect of the player’s relationship as their Alzheimer’s condition has led them to forget things and put on a strain on this loving relationship as feelings of loneliness and sadness creep in.
The task in this level is to find the right ladder that will help you reach the top of the bed and retrieve the object that will trigger the character’s memory. The player is in a hazy room, inspired by the game Islands: Non Places, where they must search for the correct size ladder surrounded by ladders all different sizes. This room is meant to help player’s sympathize with the character, since they have alzheimer’s and it’s a disease that affects a person depth perception, distance between objects and sense of judgment. It’s meant to be one of the easier levels in the game, that can help the player figure out what they are meant to do.
Princess Bed
Room Scene.
There a sticky notes on the walls of the room, and on some of the object that will glow in foggy atmosphere. Player has to roam around the room and find the right ladder that will reach the top of the bed that hold the object at the very top.
The sticky notes are in reference to the character and the disease that they have to help build the story telling and learn about the character a bit more. Many people with alzheimers use sticky notes to help assist them with memory loss, and place them all over their homes and rooms to help them be more independent and remember tasks as well as other things.
The atmosphere is pink and foggy, similar to the inspiration images below. The fog will also be in the shade of the hex code below.
If I had more time, I would make more objects that the player could interact with as they roam around the room searching for the right ladder. Interactions like exploring the character objects in the room, reading a journal, or writing on the sticky notes, opening and closing the music box would have really made the scene more interactive.
All the textures and models in this scene are low poly and simplistic in terms of design and textures. It was my intention design for this scene in a minimalistic style to support the atmosphere, and the mood.
In order to make players understand the story of the game clearly, I think the game can add simple text animations that can be triggered in some rooms. When a player collects a specific item or moves to a specific location, the storyline text will appear. Take Dark Deception as an example. The text automatically appears in the screen when the player reaches a specific location. Another example is What Remains of Edith Finch.
The key words of this life stage are ego integrity and despair. In this room, the character will review the whole lifetime’s achievements and unforgettable experience of regret.
Visual design and game play
There are seven towers and many rocks in this room, which are floating in the air. Each tower represents a specific stage of the character’s life and has special decoration. The main game mechanics of this room is jumping. Players need to jump between rocks to reach the next tower through the cliff. Players identify the life stages symbolized by each tower and place the previously collected item in the corresponding tower. When all items are properly placed, the portal to the final room will open.
Based on our previous discussions about the narrative idea and the presentation of the labyrinth pieces, I found an image that fitted and by using Photoshop I split it into eight pieces for our subsequent sections.
According to the new gameplay mechanism, the game mechanism in some scenes has been modified, and the ending screen in some scenes has been added to make the whole story provide a stronger sense of substitution.
Based on our meeting and discussion today, I have summarised and collated the completed room environments and gameplay for subsequent development and documentation.
I’ve briefly listed the narrative parts we discussed at Monday’s meeting and the flow of the game about my own room, while for the other rooms I’ll refer to everyone’s blogs to populate the document if I have time later.
The age of adolescence usually represents confusion, instability, mind block, the thought of failure, stress and miscue, where the person is not sure about the decision where he/she is usually shaken, and where the confusion begins.
So the room is designed in a way where the user feels the instability, confusion and all the adolescent characteristic feature.
So, for the study, The “Jewish Museum” in berlin is taken as a study for the adolescent concept room. The architectural masterpiece is designed by Architect Daniel Libeskind. The Jewish Museum is a museum built to represent the lives of the Jewish people who they had treated as slaves. The term slave is totally different from adolescent but the characteristic elements are the same.
So in the museum, the floor is designed in a jagged way so that the visitors feel the instability. The walls are disproportionately high compared to humans just to make the visitor feel inferior the wall has horizontal narrow windows depicting hope. The floor of the museum is also designed on different levels to represent there are no straight lines in life. Some walls are designed inclined to make the user feel insecure.
So, inspired by the Jewish museum, my room design is designed with the play for walls and floors.
The room is designed like a maze which represents choosing the way in life is crucial in the adolescent age. So first the walls are designed to create multiple different passages where the correct path leads us to the correct exit.
So thus with this inspiration, my room design is started. I started to create a plan for the room with the divisions. The first concept is to create a curvilinear wall which creates a more interesting pathway. The second conceptual idea is to create a perpendicular wall. This idea has many entrances and exits but the pathway was not quite interesting as the curve wall. But the complexity of the game is better in the perpendicular wall.
Yunjia Chen and I were in charge of the sound design part. After communicating with the room designers, we made the following table.
In the design of the basic sound, we hope to use a sense of unreality to express Alzheimer’s disease. For example, Sonic Detector and Radar, we used synth patches and reversed playback. In the sound design of each room, we communicated with each room designer and divided it into ambient sound and sound effects.
UI Sound
For the UI sound design, we continue the traditional non-realistic sound and make different sound designs based on the same style.
For the sound of the locator that explores the position of the room, we hope to use a sound that can be looped and not annoying, and this sound can also be distinguished in frequency from music and ambient sound.
You can audition some sound design:
Sonic Detector
Picture Appears/Disappears
Highlight Rubik’s Cube
Room Sound Design
We designed it based on ambient sound and sound effects, and recorded footsteps in different materials. In some rooms, we have made special designs, such as transfer Door.
Transfer Door
Also some items have more detailed sounds:
Microscope
In the original idea, we hoped to switch different ambient sounds in the classroom room according to the items we got every time, and made three kinds of sounds: exam, after class (noisy), after school (adding outdoor sound), but in the final game play, we chose after-school sounds to bring players a better gaming experience.
Also, we have a special sound production for dark rooms:
