Week 0 - The Beginning

Tuesday, 29.01.2019

With four games being chosen for Semester 2 to be further designed and produced, I was assigned to The Way Home (originally designed by Abigail Foster, @toasterabbie) along with Adam Witts, Alex Pollard, Bartłomiej Wachacz, Jacob Barlow and James O'Farrell.

Taking on the role of Narrative designer, my job is to oversee the game's storyline, fill in any missing information in the timeline, as well as fix any inconsistencies within the plot. Furthermore, it is my task to form the required dialogues, considering that they are the "live narrative" that the players most vividly stumble upon, in addition to finding the needed cast to fulfil the audio recording of the piece.

Sorting everyone's designated place within the team, we tasked ourselves with looking through the original game designer's GDD in order to better grasp the essence of the piece and prepare any questions for the Friday session of "Ask the Creators".

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Friday, 01.02.2019

Having looked through Abbie's GDD, I had formed a few questions, which received the following answers:

• Q: Is there a particular part of the story you would like to focus on, considering that a vertical slice is supposed to be made? A: Somewhere where Teddy is introduced after. Perhaps, the library. You can decide yourself.

• Q: How flexible are you with us changing the narrative/art style? A: Not flexible at all.

After asking the second question, I was briefly interrupted by Dr. James Stallwood, our tutor, who noted that the original game designers are not supposed to have any real input into the creation of their game, but, rather, can be referred to in terms of giving advice, as to how did they envision the game being created. This has naturally provided us with more space to breathe, as long as our initiative was accepted by the Team Leader (who happened to be very reluctant to any changes, considering his personal relation with the game designer).

Once that session was completed, we ventured out in our designated teams to discuss where the game would start within the vertical slice and what could potentially be included within it. We have stopped ourselves on the centrepiece, following the main character's progression: High Street → Library → Fallen tree → Waterfall. Going through our roles again, we agreed on the areas each one of us is going to take on before following with the weekend homework, which required everyone to go through the GDD again and note down everything in regards to the areas that affected their role. As it stands, the roles are:

• Adam - Lead Animator + Character Design

• Alex - Level and Mechanics Design + Coding(?)

• Anton - Narrative Design + Dialogue + Casting

• Barty - Environment Art + Music

• Jacob - Environment Animator

• James - Team Leader + Lead coder

You can find my homework here.