Sea of Dreams

White “stars” and a yellow “moon” set the tone for the game.

For Sea of Dreams, I wanted to try and turn a personal experience into a series of situations that felt relatable.  I didn’t want to add too many details about a specific location, or describe “them” that much, but more importantly I wanted to convey the feelings of different scenarios, which for me is “what could have been.”

While trying to think of an idea for a text based game, I considered doing something quick and lighthearted, but the whole “Choose Your Own” style of game with different pathways and options reminded me of how I processed my memories of my experience.  I would rethink things over and over and over again, wondering about possible scenarios (I am totally an overthinker for everything).  Anyway, I really wanted to create different outcomes in my game, and have different ways of getting there.  Since I am the type of person who likes going through all the scenarios when I play these types of games, I added a restart button where you can “Dream Again” after the game ends, and I added several loops in the storyline.

Game Structure

I’ve never coded with C# or Unity before, but I have experience with Processing, which definitely helped smooth the learning process.  I referenced the code from the tutorial for the structure of my game.  Rather than a compass-like map, I picked a structure like a tree where most “rooms” or new questions have two options that keep branching off to different endings.  But to make it more complex than that, some options take you back to the start (depicted as your character waking up and attempting to go back to sleep), and another ending is waking up entirely (the game ends).

The Storyline

Before drafting the storyline for Sea of Dreams, I took time to consider my concept for this style of text-based game, since the genre is a “Choose Your Own Adventure” type.  I kept thinking about how the player doesn’t exactly have a choice.  Everything is pre-set by the creator, and there is definitely an intended path.  I wondered how I could challenge this, to give the player more control over their actions.  I gave the player a sense of control by the options they can take in the course of the game.  Sea of Dreams takes place mostly in a dream, but I give the player the choice to resist the memories and to wake up and end the game.  There is also another path that has you wake up but fall back asleep, where you can go through your previous steps differently, but you haven’t stopped playing the game and you can still dream.  This loop hopefully stops the player from feeling trapped in a storyline until its inevitable ending.  It’s also like a lucid dream where you can try and change your adventure.  I used a Boolean operator to indicate when the person has entered the loop and wakes up:

The Development Process

The part that took the longest was making sure each room correctly linked to the next room.  I had to play through several times to make sure each pathway worked correctly (all the way through several loops and the Boolean operator to one of the eventual 6 endings).  There was a lot of back and forth between running the game and fixing the code, so having my entire map planned out on paper beforehand saved my life.  I also had to color-code my map for key details, because I actually left out an ending at first.  I also had to make sure I didn’t have consecutive W’s as keys to advance the story, since I encountered the same problem people had with the lack of a GetKeyUp function.

Anyway in conclusion, I’m really proud of this game!  I like coding so I’m really pleased that I got it to run okay.  I loved reading everyone’s comments—you all got it!!  Seeing everyone’s feedback was actually one of my favorite parts of this whole process.

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SPOILERS!  Only keep scrolling if you want to read all the endings.

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I’m too lazy to screenshot and crop them all:

1. You lie in your bed, alone, and remember it’s only a dream.
2. ‘Someday…’ They say. ‘When I have the time [I’ll visit you]… ‘Who knows what the future holds?’
3. You steady your breathing and stand still. You watch the sun as it gradually falls. You stand as only a sliver of red light remains. Then, you still stand as it disappears. Nothing lasts forever. You crease your eyebrows together, as if the light still bothered you, yet it’s darker now than it was before.
4. You can’t bear to watch as the day slips from your grasp, and as the memories start to flood back. You turn away, and with your back towards the sun, you return from where you came. It’s time to go home now.
5. You open your eyes and stare at the blank wall. The dream is over. You can’t fall asleep.
6. a.

6. b.