Group Non-Existing (Digital Game Blog Post)

Since no one in class wants to change their group, we just started to think about this project in our original group, and we had a couple of ideas.

On the last Thursday, Liu said he want to make a multiplayer 3D game, and he has two ideas about the game. The first idea is a two player cooperative game and one of the player plays in 2D scene while the other plays in 3D scene. The other idea is a competitive game and we give players some building materials and they build their own defence and try to destroy others. However Fey said he wants to make some games more abstract and more focus on experience and feelings. These are the games we wouldn’t have chance to make when we go the industry.

On the last Tuesday, we (Liu, Haowei, Fey, Dan’s group ) met again, we shared ideas from each other, while ended with discussing within the original group.

Haowei asked Fey if he wanted to continue the idea of experience game with emotions as the main theme, but Fey might move to other ideas.

She came up with a gameplay mechanic for horror game that since fear is from people themselves, so the game can set a scale of fear, the character would be difficult to control when it is higher, and more horror stuff would appear in the game.

Another idea was a setting for game.


Sketchbook Game (name TBD)

Narrative: It’s about person’s journey inside his brain. Trying to find an idea while he wander through his deep subconscious. Game starts at a cliff, with a sign on it: memento mori. Meaning ‘’remember, you are a mortal’’. Player has to jump into void to start his/her journey. (jump will mean ‘’leap of faith’’)






While player fighting with his/her enemies which is: depression, anxiety, boredom, self-doubt, he will find an idea. And idea will turn into a boss fight. Because sometimes you have to kill your ‘idea’ even though you fall in love to it. When player defeats the idea(boss), monstrosity will turn into a baby in a crib. And player has to strike to that innocent being. – the meaning behind this: it’s hard to kill your ideas, even more painful but has to be done. –

Player will start as a child and growing up inside game world till he is strong enough to fight the boss -idea-. The player start like 4 or 5 years old, and he has superpowers that he will lose in the future

Disrespect, boredom, fear

Self-abased, self-doubt, anxiety, depression

Level TBD: Rescue a butterfly

Instead of a journey throuth of finding an idea, we wanted to tell a story about how education system takes children ‘’superpowers’’. We wanted give players superpowers such as flying at the start and when they get almost get used to the mechanic, we take it away from them.

We demonstrate taking superpowers away in a way that show player she is not the only one. Education system reduces everyone into the same level and student compete on that unfair playground. They make it look like it’s fair by taking away children superpowers, in this case, you can see in the box there are magical wands, rubrics cube and soon to be added: our characters flying cape.


Flying level




(players reach the ‘teacher’ level by passing this flying level)

Main theme was of this levels inspired from a saying that ‘’Will they kick us out from the game if don’t look like them?’’
There are people watching the flying character, they all look empty inside. Like their joy was taken from them. And the birdhouse at the end. It’s metaphorical classroom/school. Since all birds pushed away by their parents to fly alone.

We add some inspirational moments from history shows that being different is not a shame.



Since we had a limited time and limited resources, we had to skip the parental protection phase of the character and focus more on criticize the educational system.

We sketch some ideas about our main character. Even though we had something we like, we decided to use more abstract character rather than real ‘girl’.



At next levels, we will focus on a parental aspect of the education system. Children’s seen as racing horse and have to clog their ‘friends’ way to climb the ladder of success.

In this part of the game, we tried to visualize the ‘’exams’’. It’s a race and all parents are watching their children. Of course, some kids don’t succeed as other do, so we put them as a obstacles for player to jump over. It’s key to feedback players that when they jump over ‘’other kids’’ they have to receive a success sound as a feedback. Cause that’s what happens in real-life.




Our character has to chase a butterfly and tries to catch before the ‘’exam’’ ends. But players never able to catch it. And they fall in to the ‘’line level’’ which is demonstrates the success and failure in education system. In Success part, there is kid who already catch the butterfly and taking the elevator to ‘’success’’ but our character has to fall down to the ‘’failure’’ since she couldn’t catch the butterfly.



We tried to visualize a year in a kid’s life. A year that she starts school. We try to achieve: visualize the story, criticize the system and raise empathy on players.

Lately, Fey been listening the Muse’s new album The Simulation Theory. And he get inspired from that so much. In the album, Matt Bellamy mentioned that people who rise and question the systems ending up failing since ‘’we are caged in simulations’’ and ‘’It’s too late for a revolutionBrace for the final solution’’. That’s why we added a newgameplus option. When players fail(game doesn’t allow them to succeed) they will have an option to ‘’try again’’ or ‘’out of system’’

When they enter ‘’try again’’ they will go back to the beginning of the game but the interactions text will differ and those interactions will point out to the player ‘’you are caged in simulation’’.

When players choose out of system option, they will see a warning ‘’this means war, with your creator’’ and the ‘’ending screen’’ will appear. Which we haven’t made the decision yet but it will be ready for the Thursday.