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The life stage in this room is toddlerhood. This room has a variety of toys and legos. Also, this room is different from other rooms, it is really huge, so that the player is only the height as a lego brick inside the room.
Players need to climb over the hills of these blocks, climb up the storage box, then jump on the top of the stool and then climb over another mountain of blocks, and finally climb onto the bed to get the key item.
During this period, players can use the Rubik’s Cube on the ground, push it and fill up the “gully”; they can also use the Lego blocks around them to build a simple “bridge”
The background design of this room is set in the mid-adulthood, and the main workplace is a narrow office. During work, he received an email with an attached Alzheimer’s examination form. This room is the final stage of the plot and a key room that highlights the theme.
Room Design
The design of this room retains a portion of the original theme, which was based on the “blind theme” (now the game is based on Alzheimer’s disease).
Game Play Design–Sonic Radar System
I have designed this room to be completely dark, and when players scan the room (using a soundwave and echo effect), the items in the room are briefly displayed in wireframe form. Players need to constantly scan the room to figure out their position and the layout of the room.
reference effect-
final effect-
Thanks to Roger for his help in implementing this effect!
As we are cooperating to build the game, so it might be better to set up a standard outline of what content should be included in the room design docs, please makes sure that the content below is included in your room design so it can be re-build quickly and easily.
This room relates to the early adulthood stage of people. The keywords of this stage are love, isolation and relationship. Based on these words, this room attempts to display the emotion and atmosphere of loneliness and longing for love. I want to use lighting to create a contrast atmosphere. The overall tone of this space is warm, but the house in the center of the space uses cool colors to create a lonely atmosphere. The trees outside the house are designed to show the vitality and warmth brought by establishing close relationships. The house presents three different scenes as the players explore, which show the loneliness and psychological contradictions of people at this stage.
Map
Basic Models
Rendering examples (without textures)
Key item-Finger ring
Visual References
Gameplay
The whole environment is divided into six different parts by lakes and river. There are five portals for each area. The players need to explore each area and walk through the portal to enter the next area. They will enter the house and collect the finger ring. The portal to the next room will then open.
The main theme of this game is about memory and emotion of a person, and the content and style of each room will be designed according to the emotions of the main character at that particular stage.
According to the theory on psychological development of human beings (Erik H Erikson), the development of human psychology can be divided into eight stages. There are more details follow this link. Each room of this game can be associated with a specific stage and the objects in the room are designed according to what the main character is likely to experience during this stage. For example, the room that represent the stage of infancy will contain items related to the mother, mildness and other things that connect with trust/hope.
Infancy, Trust vs. Mistrust
Toddlerhood, Autonomy vs. Shame/Doubt
Early Childhood, Initiative vs. Guilt
Late Childhood, Industry vs. Inferiority
Adolescence, Identity vs. Role Confusion
Early Adulthood, Intimacy vs. Isolation
Middle Adulthood, Generativity vs. Stagnation
Late Adulthood, Ego Integrity vs. Despair
Idea of Gameplay
Each room has an incomplete phenakistoscope as the key item.
The player needs to explore the room and collect pieces to repair the phenakistoscope, which contains elements reveal the life stage that the room represents. When the player collects all the pieces, the phenakistoscope will begin to rotate and show the animation that reveal the experience of the character.
Keywords
Childhood memories, growing up, change, breaking the mirror
Narrative design
This room may have once been a toy room for the player or others, but in the present the owner of the room has grown up, so the room is rarely entered at present. The two states of light and dark represent the two states of this room, one where the person used to stay as a child, and the other represents the dark state of the room when the person grows up. It is also hoped that the story of the main character will lead the player to discover the truth of this room. The owner of the room has encountered problems with his parents’ divorce in this room, which has left the room untouched for years, and the photos that the player has to piece together are childhood memories of the owner of the room, fulfilling the owner’s desire to go back to when his parents were still together. This could also be the break-up of a friendship.
Gameplay design
The gameplay of this room involves the player collecting hidden items in a room with alternating lights, which switch every 30 seconds. The items in both the dark and light rooms are the same, just in different states. The light rooms are clean and tidy, while the dark rooms are dusty. Players must make the most of the switch between the dark and light rooms to collect items while following clues to find different items hidden in the room and combine them to unlock the room’s hidden secrets, such as broken photos or toys. The style of the rooms is based on a childhood story. Half of the photos are in the light and dark rooms and the player will complete the game by combining them together.
“Your eyes deceive you, what you see is different from what you actually are. ”
Narrative design
This room is owned by an elderly man with Alzheimer’s disease who often has trouble remembering things, and because of his age it also often looks at objects that are sometimes large and sometimes small. This room contains two of the most precious memories of the old man’s life, one of his family and the other of his friends. The misalignment of objects in the room also represents the misalignment of the old man’s memories due to his illness.
Gameplay design
The player enters the world as the old man usually sees it. All objects become larger or smaller depending on the player’s interaction, tricking the player’s eyes into seeing a different size than the actual object, and the player needs to manipulate the size of the object in the correct location. The player needs to find the correct position to discover the most important memory of the owner of the room (this can be two objects / or one object, such as a painting, but with different content in different locations) in order to pass the game.
Room 3 Emotional Detective Room
Key words
Emotional feedback, Case resolution
Narrative design
The conclusion of this case was a suicide. The owner of this room was a child with autism. This room is the sanatorium where he stayed and where his parents trusted the promises of the sanatorium and placed him in foster care for treatment, but in reality, the sanatorium did not cure him and his parents did not visit him after they sent him there. And, as many of the items carry emotions from the different stages of his life before he committed suicide, the player needs to find the truth about what really led to his suicide. The player will discover that the ultimate reason for his suicide was the truth about the death of the only friend he knew in this sanatorium, and the recorded phone calls of his parents who actually tried to abandon him.
Gameplay Design
The player enters the room and interacts with different objects in the room that carry different emotional reactions of the owner (which can be detected by the lights and sounds of the objects). The player has to find objects in the room that are related to the case and eventually deduce the murderer of the case in order to put the owner to rest. Objects in different stages have different emotions, so the player has to find out which objects are key to solving the case and sort and order them to put them together correctly in order to reveal the truth about the case.
The walls are covered with masks of different colours/patterns/facial expressions. The number of masks should be even numbered.Every mask can make different sounds when they are clicked. The masks will be lit when the player continuously clicks two same masks. And the door will open when the player lights all masks on the wall.
Room2: Leisure time at home
Tone: Warm
Objects: Fireplace, sofa, CD player, a sleeping dog, books, plants, a clock and any other things in the living room
Sounds: Jazz music, fire, page turning
Mechanism:
When the player initially enters the room, there is no sound in the room. The objects will make sounds only when the player clicks them. It can let the player find their own relevant memories in the process.
Room3: A fantasy dream
Imagine that we are travelling in the sky. The stars, clouds and moon are around us. Experience the feeling of freedom and illusion. It is quiet and peaceful.
Objects: clouds, moon, stars, balloons/hot air balloons, bed
Sounds: pure and ethereal low-frequency sounds, space sounds
Mechanism: Let players enjoy the room’s sounds and the feeling of freedom.
Mechanism: When player move towards the teleport, they will get teleported to a farther place, if they turn their back towards the door then go back into it, player will get teleported to a closer position to the objective.
Use in-room Non-Euclidean teleport, when player move towards the goal, you get farther and farther away from it, but if you go farther from the objective, you will actually get closer to it.
Theme slogan “Sometimes stay back will push you forward”
Room of Infinity
Use a lot of mirrors to create the feeling of infinite space room, while place the physical mirrors as small maze to let the player use sound radar for navigation.
Room of Asleep
Play human breathing BGM and use moving render target to change the size of the room visually, thus to simulate the in-and-out-breathing of asleep human.
Keywords: Virtual world, Abstract Visual effects concept:
The whole scene is in a dark atmosphere
As shown in the reference image, the interior of the room is near total darkness with no walls around it and no clear shapes, the only thing that exists in the room are the doors in and out of the room and the broken planes underneath the feet. I think this particle effect will make for a great visual experience.
Game Mechanics:
The forms of models in this room may be displayed as point clouds. The room was completely dark, with only the surface composed of glowing dots. At the same time, the key prop of this room “hourglass” will be hidden in these dotted planes, and only when the player follows the sound to find the position of it, the hourglass will be rendered as a solid model.
Different from the other rooms, players are able to free from the 2D ground here and follow the 3D surround sound to move back and forth as well as up and down in the room.
Point Cloud:
Room 2
Keywords: Technology, Luminous Visual effects concept:
Object edge glow (Contour luminous)
The effect is similar to the object edge highlighting effect in the image and is achieved using the Unity engine’s Vfx shader effect by expanding the model’s normals outwards. This effect is relatively easy to achieve and visually striking. I am testing the possibility of adding a radar scan-like effect to the room, this is similar to the diffusion of sound waves and fits in with the main interaction of the game – dealing with sound.
Game Mechanics:
This room is also dark, in this room players can grab some small cubes to throw. When the cubes hit the floor and walls, there will be a loud sound, while a circular ripple similar to sound waves and radar will spread out, briefly lighting up the environment around the point of impact. Players constantly throw stones to familiarize themselves with the room’s structure and find the exit.
Reference：The Unfinished Swan
Room 3
Keywords: Hand-drawn style, cartoon-rendered style, contour lines
Visual effects concept
The effect of this room can be approached in a 2D rendering style, unlike other rooms using the PBR workflow, the model in the room will not have a lot of color variation and reflections, but instead the color of the object’s own grain and the color of the shadows, meaning that a model will only have two colors, while contour lines are added to mimic the feel of hand-drawn lines.
