Dev Log 2 - Pitching a Game
Welcome to my second dev log!
The subject of this dev log is the game I ended up pitching to my group. As per my last dev log, I went with the virtual reality theme and created a concept called Vidarium. In Vidarium, you play as a boy who goes to a virtual reality school. After testing new mind-scan technology, several of his classmates get trapped inside some of their worst memories, and he has to help them escape.
When I first created this concept, it was mostly just a basic visual novel. I decided that it needed a bit more of a hook. I came up with a system where the player is presented with a dialogue box with most of the sentence covered by a glitch effect. Most of the screen is also covered with this effect. As the player searches the area and discovers more about each classmates situation, the glitch effect starts to disappear. When the room and the dialogue box is fully uncovered, the player can have a conversation with the trapped classmate and snap them back into reality.
This was a fun thought experiment, especially since my group made physical paper prototypes (I would not recommend making a visual novel style game in physical form). In the end, we ended up going with a more gameplay-focused pitch. I'm interested to see how the game and our team will develop.
Thanks for reading!
Gamification Class Project
| Status | Released |
| Author | Sarah Chambers |
More posts
- Dev Log 6 - Post ProductionApr 08, 2024
- Dev Log 5 - ProductionMar 28, 2024
- Dev Log 4 - Pre Production & Starting Our WorkJan 16, 2024
- Dev Log 3 - Scheduling My WorkOct 25, 2023
- Dev Log 1 - Conducting Research for Game DesignSep 20, 2023
Comments
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Hey Sarah I think your game idea is a very interesting take on a visual novel Style game. with the glitch effect being unrevealed and having more of the area to search around can be a very novel concept when it comes to puzzle solving or knowledge exploration. I enjoyed your paper prototype as it was very colorful and well organized.
It seems that a lot of people went with a visual novel-style idea this year. I think that's probably because coming up with a very involved idea, in terms of mechanics, for a specific topic on a "serious game" was quite a challenge. I think making sure your game as enough interesting player interaction is important, especially because we are in a Game Design course after all. Good luck moving forward!
I think the virtual reality concept to be the problem faced is very interesting as the player almost becomes the character as you can experience what they are going through in the game 1:1. I think that you should keep this idea for later even if you don't work on it now because i think that the idea can become something great.
I think that's a really cool twist on a standard visual novel. Having the glitch effect over text could add some interesting replay-ability if you gain context to what the glitch text says on repeat play-throughs. Focusing on a more gameplay focused pitch makes sense, but if it ends up being a narrative heavy game this mechanic could still be interesting.
Hi Sarah! Your attempt at making a physical paper prototype of a visual novel game was heroic o7 Though you group didn't end up deciding on going forward with your game I find the story concept really interesting and I would love to see it come to shape someday and I like imagining that it will feel kind of like Fran Bow or Little Miss Fortune. The world needs more games like that — they're so cute and profound at the same time U_U