Presentation

The concept

A. Theme:

I intended to use the process of ‘The Midnight Gospel’ to build a walking simulator game that depicts a bomb going off during dialogues between humans and non-humans, and therefore express my thoughts about anti-war.

The mushroom manipulates the boy's body to see the nature it grew up in from a human perspective, encounters a bomb in a village that wants to kill itself, and ends up watching the bomb explode with the human boy - a visual feast for the mushroom, as fantastic a hallucination as it makes for the human, and death and war for the human boy.
Full of nonsensical and hilarious dialogue throughout but leading to a heavy ending.

B. Brainstorming (try to list some features that reinforce the theme):

a. 2.5d perspectives.
 Put 2d sprite in a 3d environment to create a stylized effect, to create a feeling of illustration book.

b.walk simulator.
 Refer midnight in paris and the midnight gospel, try to mix the animation, movie with game through lots of text dialogue, but players can still explore the world as well (which requires the world has to be highly explorative)

c.Health system.
The life value of mushroom head and the boy are keeping lost along with time, player should maintain the life of both the mushroom head and the boy, and they require different props (which also encourage player to explore the world).

C. elements by category( see mindmap below):

a. Technical element
   unity, fungus, dialogue system, 
b. Mechanism element

c. Narrative element
d. Aesthetic element

Game details:

Name:Mushroom Adventure
Type:Walking simulator
Aims and objectives:Mushroom head operates a boy's body manage get back to the top of mountain
Tool:unity

Game design mindmap

This mind map covers all aspects of the project in terms of mechanics, technology, art, and narrative, and I’m used to documenting my design decisions and implementations in this way.

You can access this link for a close view if interested:

https://gpdjepk6ed.feishu.cn/mindnotes/bmncnTZRLNZ4nlmQQSNOnVahYva#mindmap

Game dev flow

Playtest

Reflect

1. The message I wanted to convey was not really strong.

The problem may be that the players are not very involved. I had some ideas for mechanics to keep the player engaged, but they weren’t directly related to the story. I was thinking of splitting the story into two parts, the main story and the fragmented narrative, with the main story progressing by completing levels and the fragmented narrative being earned by collecting a certain number of items in individual levels. However, due to time constraints, I only implemented the main story draft, and for the fragmented narrative part, I implemented the collection function, and did not have time to design the content.

2. Not bold and experimental enough in presentation.

3.Not good enough at time control. I spent too much time to learn how to achieve some mechanics and art effects in unity, do technical arts to make it amazing on the aesthetic level.