Survivor Logs: Station Fen

Date: December/January 2018-2019

 

Made as a narrative successor to my fungus-based game Talbruk's Justice this project focused on pairing narrative with gameplay. The initial intent for the game was to make a collectathon narrative game where the player would move through a 3D space. This was changed with the addition of a first-person shooter mechanic that added another layer of gameplay to the project.

 

This project was the only time that I have used the programme Ink. It is used to make a narrative structure that can be further implemented into game engines such as Unity. As of now, this is the most frustrating project that I have worked on as it pairs a coding language that I have little experience with, with another that I am only starting to get into the flow with.

 

The best aspect of the project is that it gave me the necessary experience to try and progress in my knowledge of C# and producing my own games. The level design in the project was what I spent the most time with and I learnt a lot from the project. Such as making sure that the scale of the level and assets fit the theme which would be worked on in later projects, and that large empty stages are extremely boring to go through. This would also be worked on in later projects with the addition of more assets to flesh-out a scene.

 

Throughout testing the game, I learnt that there wasn't a lot of content within, so there was then the addition of another ending that the player could go for, giving them a choice to how they would want to progress through the game. This allowed the player to experience as much of the game as they wanted, instead of all of it.

 

My regrets for this project was not having enough time to fill the scene with assets like the first narrative game I made. This made the entire level seem devoid of life and negatively impacts the experience. I would have spent more time making new assets for the game to try and counteract this.