(The content of this post was co-edited by the following 8 authors: Roger, Ruxin, Bohan, Linteng, Alexandria, Zhaoyi, Yunjia, Andrew, and the final typesetting and arrangement were completed by Roger.)
Introduction
“Echoes of Memory” is an indie game project focused on the theme of Alzheimer’s disease, which provides players a unique journey of recovering lost memories utilizing interesting features of Non-Euclidean space and the physical nature of sound. It is designed to be a spiritual journey in a maze of memories where the player wanders across 8 rooms of memories set up spatially as a Rubik’s cube. Each of the rooms represents a different stage of the protagonist’s life, but all were unfortunately forgotten by the protagonist.
Unlike Rubik’s cube in the real world, each of whose cube is only connected to a specific set of other cubes, our maze is placed in a non-Euclidean space and the connection of each cube becomes uncertain. Heading through the left door from one cube room, you might find out yourself end up in a room that is located at the lower right side of the original room mysteriously.
This mechanism is also a reflection of the symptoms of people with Alzheimer’s disease, who often experience short-term memory loss and forget why they are in the current space and what they were doing before as if they were suddenly teleported to an unknown location(Burns and Iliffe, 2009). We simulate the patient’s experience through teleport gates designed per the principle of “What you see is not where you go”, to form a sense of dislocation in spatial cognition, thus making players understand the seriousness of the disease more immersively, as well as to raise their attention to the disease in real life.
To anchor yourself in the dizzying Non-Euclidean space, the physical nature of sound will be your humble and reliable assistant. The sound waves bounce back when they hit physical obstacles thus helping you reveal hidden objects and entrances as well as giving you hints on what to do next. The directional information of sound source makes it possible for you to listen for a clue to determine spatial position relations between rooms.
The essential difference between each individual lies in their unique experience and memory. Explore the memory rooms that bring together important memories at different stages of life, and find the anchor of a peaceful mind from the chaotic spiritual world.
Game Download Link
A fully playable game demo and game development project can be found via below link:
Google Drive link for game download
The game was developed completely using the Unreal Engine blueprint programming system, original codes can be found within the project files named as “DMSP.zip”.
We are actively working on improving the game and will publish the game on Steam for easier access once it’s ready.
Project Handbook and Docs
The project handbook explains the inspiration, game setting, mechanism, gameplay, and work allocation of the project visually to give a more clear illustration of the project’s aims.
You can find the handbook here: Project Handbook
PPT and videos for final presentation: Slides and Video for Presentation
Full Gameplay Demonstration
A walk-through screencast of our game can be found below:
Dev Logs and Presentation Documentary
Videos of our development process, presentation day exhibit build process, and player interviews can be found below:
Game Theme Research and Narrative Design
All the memory rooms together tell a unique story about the spiritual world, see the final design details from below posts:
Game Flow and Narrative Script
Initial ideas and inspirations can be found here:
Game Narrative and Inspirations
Room Theme Design
Finalized memory maze includes 8 different rooms representing 8 different stages of life, design details can be found below links:
The intermediate iteration of room designs can also be found below for comparison which demonstrated the evolution of room designs:
Gameplay and Experience Design
Though every player will experience the memory rooms in a different sequence according to their decision-making in real-time during playing, the experience and gameplay of each individual room are settled and documented as in the below link:
Game Flow and Narrative Script
Sound Design and Spatial Audio System
Sound plays a vital role in our games, not only as a core game mechanic that enriches the player experience but also fulfills the emotional building needs of our memory chambers. You can find sound design demos and research via below links:
Final Sound Design:
Initial Ideas:
Ideas and Plans for Sound Design (SFX)
Methods for implementing spatial audio
Musical Soundtracks
Music plays an important role in the game to embody the character and emotions of each room and elevate the visual designs for the player. Having a cohesive musical soundtrack also serves to build an overarching sense of connectivity between the different rooms, and having several musical motifs reoccur in different places creates a sense of continuity within the game, notably the motif of the main theme, Memories Lost, which manifests across different tracks in various different styles and inverted forms. A variety of different instruments and musical styles was used to give each room/level its own unique identity and aesthetic and go hand in hand with the room’s individual look.
Musical Soundtrack documentation log
NB: As WordPress only has the space to contain mp3 audio files, the wav files have been uploaded to SoundCloud for easier access and documentation.
Complete SoundCloud playlist:
Final Musical Soundtrack designated by room:
Musical Soundtrack: Toddlerhood Room
Musical Soundtrack: Early Childhood Room
Musical Soundtrack: Late Childhood Room
Musical Soundtrack: Adolescence Room
Musical Soundtrack: Early Adulthood Room
Musical Soundtrack: Middle Adulthood Room
Musical Soundtrack: Late Adulthood Room (main theme)
Initial Ideas and Iterations:
Musical Soundtrack: Late Childhood Room (original version)
Technical Details
Multiple complex interactions were involved in the whole gameplay process, object-oriented programming principle was used when making the game as the majority of gameplay was driven by object interactions. Implemented systems and technical details can be found via below link:
Technical Details of Game Implementation
Bug tracking and Game Iteration
UI Design
As the progression of the game process mainly depends on the interaction between players and key items, guiding players to find the location of interactive items became a very important part of UI design.
We provided both static and dynamic user interfaces to improve the usability and intuition of the game, you can find details via below link:
“Play Cube”: Physical Room Setup
To make the experience more immersive for the player in the physical environment, we designed the “Play Cube” as a presentation unit for each player, you can find final design details via below links:
Presentation/Exhibition-Research
Initial ideas can be found here:
Ideas on Staging the Physical Room
Final Workload Allocation Visualization
To better track all workloads distributed to each member of the group, we used 3rd party tool “Notion” for work planning and visualization, you can find the work distribution via below links:
Notion Workload Tracking By Individual Distribution
Notion Workload Tracking By Work Type
Each of the mission blocks in the above link represents an individual task that required a similar amount of time and effort to accomplish, so the number of mission blocks assigned to a specific person could demonstrate the relative workloads distributed to that individual, together with the number of posts posted, 2 parts of tracked tasks constitute the total contribution of each member to the project.
Credits
Project Lead – Roger Liu
Art Design – Bohan Chen, Ruxin Wang, Alexandria Muhammad, Linteng Yang, Roger Liu
Sound Design – Andrew Galvin, Zhaoyi Yan, Yunjia Chen
Programming – Roger Liu, Bohan Chen
Narrative Design – Bohan Chen, Ruxin Wang, Zhaoyi Yan, Alexandria Muhammad
Gameplay and Level Design – Bohan Chen, Roger Liu
Quality Assurance – Bohan Chen, Zhaoyi Yan, Ruxin Wang
Photography and Video Editing– Linteng Yang, Ruxin Wang, Zhaoyi Yan
Publicity Graphics Design – Ruxin Wang, Zhaoyi Yan
Special thanks to our dear project supervisors, Andrew and Eleni, for their insightful guidance and advice as well as unsparing support on the project.
References
Burns, A. and Iliffe, S. (2009). Alzheimer’s disease. BMJ, 338(feb05 1), pp.b158–b158. doi:https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.b158.
