I’m still working between two final project ideas, one being the concept I pitched last week (“This Is Just A Normal, Run-Of-The-Mill Walking Simulator And Everything Is Fine, Don’t Worry About It”), and the other being a text-based game called “In My Friend Kari’s Car.” I think that, for prototype 2, I will also be creating 2 separate prototypes.
As I noted in class, “This Is Just A Normal, Run-Of-The-Mill Walking Simulator And Everything Is Fine, Don’t Worry About It” is a game in which you are drowning, and no one around you seems concerned by it. As you interact with the figures in your environment, they ask you questions (“why haven’t you called me?”), or request that you perform banal tasks (“can you run this to the post office for me?”), seemingly unaware of the rising water. For the second prototype, I think I’d like to experiment with sound, perhaps adding an increasing number of voices to the game, one new voice for every person you interact with. In the first prototype, the end screen features the sound of calmly rushing water.
The second game I made a prototype for was not one I mentioned in class. “In My Friend Kari’s Car” is a text-based game organized like a narrative with a frame story. The base narrative is that my friend Kari and I are going to Home Depot to get some plants. During the car ride, I reflect on a number of experiences from my going-on-five years at Davis. For various reasons related to my obsessive-compulsive disorder – the same reasons that make it very difficult for me to keep a diary – I was worried about addressing the topic, because I felt a need to somehow include literally every noteworthy experience from my college career. In the end, largely to resist this manifestation of my obsessive-compulsive disorder, I made the conscious decision to feel that it’s okay if the narrative told in “In My Friend Kari’s Car” is not exhaustive and all-encompassing. I left things out. I know that. That’s fine. Part of why I wanted to make this game was because I believe seeing your own experiences reflected in those of others is a powerful thing that can help you understand your experiences better, by placing them in a different context. I also thought it might be a helpful way to organize my own thoughts.
On a number of occasions, when a design class has asked me to brainstorm on a topic using a mindmap of some sort, I have been struck by the fact that the mindmaps I produce might be a pretty good visualization of how my OCD causes my mind to work. Even when I consciously decide not to be as thorough as I want to be in this sort of exercise, I end up with cluttered, extensive lists, where each branch of the mindmap has countless branches of its own. The diagram I drew to help me plan out “In My Friend Kari’s Car” resembled some of my mindmaps. Perhaps the game- (or, maybe more accurately, the narrative-) structure in itself could be a way to communicate something about my experience with mental illness, in addition to the content.
For prototype 2 of “In My Friend Kari’s Car,” I would like to try making the controls mouse-based, rather than letter-based. I would like to make the display more visually engaging. I’ll also be editing the copy used in the game. Like “This Is Just A Normal, Run-Of-The-Mill Walking Simulator And Everything Is Fine, Don’t Worry About It,” I am interested in using sound to communicate the environment in the second prototype. The first prototype features “road ambiance,” used in hopes of communicating the experience of being inside “My Friend Kari’s Car,” but I am interested in fading in and out other relevant sounds, as the player reaches certain “pages” or passages from the narrative.