At the end of last month, I finished building the rough framework of the game. Let's take a look together.
Narrative:
First person perspective
Characterisation:
Jasper--the player character: a gentle male character who avoids his own needs. In the process of getting along with others, he doesn't speak up even when he feels upset, silently convincing himself in his mind to change rather than communicating with others. But when he explodes, he can be very emotional, hurting himself and his lover at the same time.
Emma--the NPC: a goal orientated and outgoing female character, lover of the player character. She speaks out without hesitation when she feels upset. She is good at giving emotional support to her lover. But she is a bit of a dictator, sometimes too eager to solve immediate problems and ignoring the long term implications.
Acts:
Act 1: Two years ago, one spring and summer before Jasper lost his sight, he was travelling to a place with his girlfriend Emma. In an effort to repair their relationship after a fight that arose because of the incompatible parts of their personalities, Emma planned the trip. They were walking on a trail in the mountains, trying to find a lookout they really wanted to visit, which was said to be a good location to view Sky Lake. But the sudden rain disrupts their plans. The rain soaked their mobile phones and clothes, making it difficult for them to continue finding their way. In the beginning, Emma tried to find a solution by offering to wait in the shade until the rain stopped. However, Jasper had already taken offense to Emma's dictatorial behavior during the first few days of the trip, and the rain became the trigger for his outburst. They had some arguments and ended up going back frustrated. They broke up soon after this.
Act 2: Two years passed, during which time Japser unfortunately lost his sight. He planned to find Sky Lake once more. Suddenly it started raining, just like that day. He beggan to miss her. In his imaginary world, Emma appeared beside him, taking his hand and telling him where the water was pooling and not to step in it. All the way they walked to that lookout. She read to him the description for Sky Lake. He used his imagination to see a colourful, diamond-like waterblob hovering in the sky. He couldn't see the real lake set between the peaks like a sighted person would. He instead imagined the waterblob in the sky based on the name of the lake.
Act 3: His imagination of the lake sparked a memory that they had actually ended up finding the lookout that day two years ago. Hint: the existence of the girlfriend in Act 2 was all in Jasper's imagination, in reality he found the lookout on his own. But why did he go so well? It's as if the imaginary girlfriend helped guide him on his voyage. Act 3 is suggesting that actually they found the lookout after the short thunderstorm in Act 1. They didn't break up because of the one small unpleasantness on the trail, but that their lives went in different directions for a variety of complicated reasons. But because Jasper had been drowning his sorrows over the long breakup and blindness, he misplaced a lot of key memories of the time they spent together in order to avoid the reality. This solo trip after losing his sight gave him a chance to face reality head-on.
Visual effects:
When Jasper was sighted: illustration style shader
Toon
Outline
Chunkiness
Bloom
When Jasper was visually impaired: overlays on the previous shader
Darker vision: the feeling of a torch light effect in the dark, everything far away from you is black, and everything close to you can be seen faintly. The place hit by the blind cane will light up.
Blur
Morandi coloured floating blobs
Stronger bloom
Auditory effects:
When Jasper was sighted: stereo sound so that the visually impaired can also have access to the gameplay
When Jasper was visually impaired: stronger stereo sound like ASMR, creating a sense of immersion
Main theme:
The transformation of the audiovisual effect emphasises the difference in perceptual characteristics between the visually impaired and the sighted and enhances understanding between the two groups.
The visually impaired and the sighted, both have things they gain and lose. Sometimes the loss of sight is a release of attention from thoughts and emotions that are limited by vision.
Edit two weeks later: I created a comic-like storyboard of this narrative to guide my subsequent production. I decided to name the experience as Sky Lake.
In fact, the inspiration for this story comes from my personal emotional experience in addition to the unique perception of the visually impaired. On the eve of the project's commencement, I went through a breakup that left me devastated, which made me start thinking about how one can strive to find a common ground that embraces differences in any relationship.
So, in this story, I tried to use the dual parallelism to express the relationship between my personal narrative and our relationship with the visually impaired. The inability of Jasper and Emma to understand each other in this story is similar to the lack of understanding between the visually impaired and the sighted in China, and the sincere emotion that Jasper evoked at the end of the story expresses my wish that one day the visually impaired and the sighted will be able to understand each other, and that all the people in the world will be willing to know each other a little bit more.
After finishing building the framework, I realized that its more of a first person perspective film than a game. So I'm hoping to change its classification to narrative experience.
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