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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.
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.
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:
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!
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.
Due to the model collision problem after the room model provided by the original team members was imported into UE, the player could not enter the room. After the team meeting, I further refined the original concept of the room, recreating the model of the room to represent the life stages of adolescence.
Firstly, the room adopts a wave-effect back room style to reflect the instability and insecurity of this period. In my opinion, adolescence is a crossroads in life, with multiple choices and a sense of confusion. Now let’s talk about the game design of the room. When the player enters the room, it is pitch black and they need to use the sound exploration function to search for three hidden items in the room. These three items correspond to three different life paths: sports, art, and science. Once the player selects any of them, they can unlock the corresponding memory photos. This also indicates that although there is instability at this stage, there are still multiple possibilities to explore. After unlocking, the entire room will become bright, which also represents that once you find your direction in life at this stage, you will be wholeheartedly devoted to it.
For gameplay design purposes, I added models to the other rooms to make them more relevant to the game.
Adolescence Room Iteration
3.20 Update – Import into UE 5 and conceptualise and implement the
Gameplay
//Mind map TBC
Schematic diagram of the scene
Room Concept
This room is a Late Childhood stage, which means goodbye to childhood, so the first thing I associate with is school/classroom/classroom. But the room also contains deeper memories of grief, as the player explores the items in the room, linking seemingly unrelated items into a complete story through the questions on the board, in order to get to the hidden pieces of memory in the room.
Gameplay. The chalkboard will act as the main interactive object in the room, giving the player different tasks by switching between different texts. The player will need to explore/search the room for what they think is the correct answer and place it on the podium, if the answer is correct it will unlock the memory associated with the item and finally by stringing all the memories together the player will be able to find the final memory fragment.
