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XB1101 - Player Handbook - Reflective Diary post #3

Second Play Test

 The second play test consisted of polishing out weapon requirements and removing a character pre-set.

Weapon requirements seemed unfair as a character would not need a maxed-out Strength stat to use a high tier dagger considering its weight doesn’t vary that much. Some commented on how weapon requirements encourage to stay behind and train instead of venturing with the rest of the squad. So as to make the gameplay more interactive and less grind focused, I removed weapon requirements except for Staffs, for similar reasons to the one’s I stated before, it would make Mages far too powerful considering armour doesn’t mitigate it.

A class that was also quite overpowered was my first pre-set character, Nox. He worked differently to the rest of characters, Nox himself was weak due to sacrificing his strength and faith to summon a spirit that now follows him everywhere he goes and obeys him. Essentially, the spirit was immortal but could be debilitated for a couple of turns, it also gained strength from Nox, meaning if he was in peril and died, so would the spirit.  

Overall, his character design was fairly problematic when it came to gameplay so I decided to stick to more conventional archetypes. 

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XB1101 - Player Handbook - Reflective Diary post #2

The early stages of my ideas for the game were fairly messy and disconnected, to fix this, many elements had to be made simpler or removed completely. One of the first problems I noticed is that I had far too many Stats involved for the players that they didn't really need, such as Sneak, Faith and ''Notorious-ness''. 

Once I tidied the stats, I play tested it with some friends, it ran fairly well, except in terms of number balancing. The first critique was that the damage scale for a Staff user was too high, at first it combined the player’s Staff damage, the damage from the Robes and their Atonement level, this combined with not being able to dodge magic, made it really frustrating to play against and far too easy to play as.

To fix these issues, I removed the Atonement scale in the damage output of the mage and also made magic to not be precise, now Staff users had to roll a twelve-sided dice and add their Atonement skill points and compete against the adversary dice result plus their Agility skill points.  Additionally, robes no longer granted armour aside from damage.

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XB1101 - Player Handbook - Reflective Diary post #1

For this assignment we had to create our own Role-Playing Game Handbook. In order to achieve experience in this genre we played a couple of games in class to get to know various combat systems, different story types (from intergalactic stories to classic medieval stories) and different character archetypes to draw inspiration from.

Additionally to playing different RPG’s, we also visited three different museums, all of them conveyed a possible game theme around their exhibitions. One of the museums being centred more around science and technology, while the other two were more focused around history, armour, weapons and taxidermy.

After exploring different possible themes, I chose to do a classic medieval focused RPG. 

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#XB1000 - Digital Game Prototype - Blog post 4:

Here’s a short video of the final result of the game.

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#XB1000 - Digital Game Prototype - Blog post 5:

After making this level, I feel like I have a lot more to learn in blueprinting and to understand more ways to use it, also different things it can be used for. Also there could be more in-depth and better things I could do in the final puzzle to make the level design for the puzzle a bit more complicated so its harder to find the solution, which could be done by increasing the amount of bridges and platforms that the tower has and can connect to.

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#XB1000 - Digital Game Prototype - Blog post 4:

Here’s a video of the game’s final result: 

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#XB1000 - Digital Game Prototype - Blog post 3:

Level Design Puzzle

In this puzzle, there are only two blueprints that I made. One is the wheel, which when clicked by the player it spins the target actor by 90 degrees. The other actor is a teleporter, it takes a empty actor as a variable and then whenever another actor collides with its trigger it teleports the player to where the assigned actor is in its variables. The idea of this puzzle is to be mechanically simple and be more focused on the level design of the puzzle, which is what adds the difficulty to the puzzle itself and not the mechanic.

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#XB1000 - Digital Game Prototype - Blog post 2:

Pattern Puzzle

To blueprint all of this successfully, I had some assistance in understanding blueprinting and learning how to create the actors required to have the pattern puzzle function. They way that this was done in Unreal was I created a single actor for the bells and assigned a different sound for each bell, which was a free sound effect downloaded and then pitch shifted in Audacity. One the bells where placed in the level, I created a blueprint for the rope that the player pulls to see the pattern, this blueprint controls the pattern and uses a array to know about all the bells in the scene. 

Once the game starts, it generates a random pattern by using a for loop to loop a set amount of times, then just grabs a random bell from the array of bells in the world.After that, whenever the player pulls the cord, it goes though the pattern and tells them to ring, then delays for couple seconds. Pulling the cord to check what the pattern is, resets an array which stores which bell has been rang, which is what causes the player to have to start over.

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#XB1000 - Digital Game Prototype - Blog post 1:

Level Design

For this assignment we had to make a white boxed out level in unreal with a few simple mechanics, for this I wanted to create a puzzle level, that consisted of at least two parts that the player needs to solve in order to finish the level. The two types of puzzles that i wanted to create was a mechanic puzzle were the player needs to remember a combination and then input it in, the second puzzle I wanted it to be a level design focused, this means that the player has to move around the level to solve it.

Pattern Puzzle: I decided to go with a pattern puzzle, where the player has to remember which bell rings in the map and then copy it in sequence. If the player gets it wrong, they have to start from the beginning, they also have the ability to check what the pattern is at any time. However in turn they have to start from scratch any time that they check the pattern.

Level Design Puzzle: After completing the pattern puzzle, the player can then enter the next room which will show a tower which they have to scale, they have a wheel that they can turn which makes the tower turn to the right by a certain amount. The player will have to figure out the correct orientation of the tower to be able to scale the tower successfully and therefore complete the level.

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Choose Your Own Adventure - Balance

Characters

When I first started to plan what I wanted my story to revolve around, I was driven more towards a psychological type. At first it was too intense because I portrayed my characters as what they look from the inside, but as I started to write down a story, I realized that would give the story an unnatural feeling. I wanted to mimic how a person looks and acts on the outside when they have a certain problem. To achieve this, I needed to tone down some of the bold statements my characters would say sometimes because the average person has a facade, even in front of their friends, and wouldn’t just reveal what’s going on inside out of nowhere, unless something triggers it. It paired well with my main character’s nature, a quiet, introverted and translucent persona, who is also quite observant.

My support characters had to have very different personalities compared to my main character. The first one I made, Lily, was quite literally a character that forces the main character, Brian, out of his comfort zone. She was the polar opposite to him, always cheerful, sociable, genuine and willing to help everyone around her. Once I forged how she looks on the outside, I researched and then projected what shadows that type of personality could have on the inside, such as an inferiority complex (the source of her need to help everyone), abusive parents that push her to be the best, which in consequence made her grow into having that complex. This is what drew her towards being a very close friend to Brian in the first place, the common person would easily mistake Brian as a broken character that is lonely in class because no one likes him, when that’s not the case.

I intended to keep the translucent persona for Brian, even when I tried to hint that he is narcissistic, feels alienated from reality and has a  slight Dunning-Kruger effect, which is why he views the rest of the people in his class more as furniture rather than real people with backstory and depth.

I took inspiration for his outside person from characters like Satoru from the anime Erased, and Elliot from Mr Robot 

Brian has known Ethan for only about a year, which is why I didn’t invest so much into describing his persona and background since Brian doesn’t actually not know that much about him, and it would feel unnatural if they were closer than Brian and Lily.

I intended Ethan to be more sociable, the type of person that cares what everyone else in the class thinks about him. He is also notoriously comical at times which is why people like conversing with him, he’s also a member of the sports club. However, his sense of humor is unique, meaning he sometimes doesn’t get other people’s jokes and in consequence has conflicts. He tends to not care much about his grades other than the fact that he has to pass them. His flaws are that he is childish and has a bad temper, which clumps up with the constant comparison his parents make between him and his siblings, who despite being younger, are more successful in their studies.

Story

I realized that I needed to smooth out these inner issues in the characters when writing the story, leaving small hints, but hints that could be brushed off as ‘’Oh, Ethan is just annoyed here and it makes sense too’’ or ‘’Oh, Lily is sad because she couldn’t help Ethan feel better’’. The hints had to be put to look like a possible normal behaviour, while the characters still had these disorders under the surface. Giving that any person tries to appear as socially acceptable as possible, the characters are oppress their emotions to an extent.

I wrote the story based off what the characters are like, as I forged their good and bad traits, I thought of a possible story that could make those traits kick off and be shown into the surface, while making the player choose which of the 2 support characters to help. At first my idea was far too complicated to present in a certain amount of words,  I couldn’t achieve to have a smooth arch in the story where you can gradually see the progress of the characters, so I decided to make it simpler. To shorten down the story I set it in the last month of their last year of college, rather than the whole last year, I played around the fact that our main character is quite oblivious of his surroundings (dissociative disorder) and prefers to spend more time on his own, which backs up the fact that he only notices now that Lily and Ethan are having their own personal issues. Since we experience the story from Brian’s point of view, it wouldn’t make sense for us to have a third eye that noticed all the other hints in the past. Brian is observant over things like the flowers at the forest, or the framing of the trees, and then proceeds to swim in his own thoughts.

The whole story is based in a small city, with a similar style as small cities in England, however, I didn’t set it in any particular real location. The time period of the story is not far away from our present either.

Working with Twine was fairly enjoyable, I didn’t struggle using it as soon as I picked up the basics of it.

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K4 - Narrative Game - All Assignments

Summary

The Devil’s Deal is a game of deceit and deception, a game that pits friends against friends in a bid of who you can trust. Are they working with you, or against you? Are they still good, or have they chosen to betray you for the winning side? You can’t trust them, and they can’t trust you, but maybe that’s for the best. After all, it’s winner takes all… Time and time again I have had to teach you cultists that trying to commune with me is not only a waste of your time, but also an extremely large waste of my time. I mean I’m the literal Devil for crying out loud, why would I waste my time with you puny cultists? But time and time again you dress up in your fancy robes and perform the same old summoning rite. And quite frankly, I’ve had about enough. So how about we make a deal? Currently, my Demons have possessed a majority of your little cult following right now, and it's your job to figure out who is a Demon and who is Unpossessed. If you can successfully reveal each of my Demons within the time limit I’ve set, then you win and I’ll let you live. And if at the timers end there is still one of my Demons hidden amongst you, then you lose and I will drag your sorry souls down to the deepest depths of hell. It’s that simple! Of course if you’d rather not play with me then I’ll just kill you anyway, but I imagine my way is a lot more fun. So what do you say, do we have a deal?

This is a narrative game for 3-5 Players. 

Rules Sheet

Game Contents:

30 Role Cards (Demon/Human)

30 Identity Cards (Character)

60 Action Cards 

Game Objective: 

Now before we start, as Lord of Hell and the literal Devil, I would just like to thank you for accepting the little deal we made. Sure, if you hadn’t accepted it I would have killed you all and dragged you down to the deepest bowels of hell, but I like to think you would have chosen to play with me regardless. Now the rules of my game are simple. If you can find and unmask all my Demons who have possessed your fellow cultists before the time runs out, you win. If it turns out you missed any of them when we reveal everyone at the end of the game, however, you will lose and I will drag you down to the deepest bowels of hell like I originally intended to do when you first disturbed me. Each time you unmask a cultist, upon being revealed they will die. This counts for both my Demons and your Unpossessed friends, so do be careful who unmask won't you. 

Lose/Win Scenario:

Now in order for you to win as the Unpossessed, you must successfully unmask the Demons hiding within your ranks in order to expose and kill them. However if you are one of my Demons, you must ensure that one of you are still left standing at the end of the game. Now if you were to run out of time and my Demons are still on the table when it comes to you revealing the remaining Role Cards (not including the players who are secretly working for me), than those of you who are Unpossessed shall lose. Alternatively, if you are one of my Demons then you lose if the Unpossessed successfully kill off all the Demons on the board, and I shall punish you accordingly for failing me. Now to prevent you from just killing whichever cultist you feel like without consequence, I have implemented a minor detail in our deal. Upon the death of the fourth Unpossessed character, the team of whoever dealt the killing blow (i.e. Demon or Unpossessed) will lose automatically. You humans can be quite… trigger happy… I've realised over my years of playing this game, so think of this is a precautionary tale, and a warning to whomever sees fit to needlessly murder. Even I have boundaries, and I’m the Devil. Now is that everything? Good, let us move on. 

Set-up:

Separate the cards into three separate shuffled card Piles. (1 Role Card Pile, 1 Identity Card, 1 Action Card Pile)

Take 2 Demon and 4 Unpossessed from the Role Card Pile and shuffle them together face down.

Deal out the shuffled Role Cards to each player, one each, without looking or revealing anyones Role. Put any of the remaining Role Cards back into the original pile without looking at what the remaining ones are.

Tip: You cannot ever reveal your Role Card to anyone else unless by forced to by an Action Card

4. Now give each player an Identity card each. These cards can be face up, and you can use them to hide your Role Card underneath. 5. Once the players are set up, place a number of Role Cards face down in the middle of the table (The number of cards on the table is determined by the Player Count x 3). 6. Place the same number of character cards face up on top of the Role Cards, one each. 7. Now that the game has been set out, each player must take 3 action cards each in their hand. 8. The player who most recently made a deal with the devil goes first. On each round start, the player to the right of the person who went first last round, now goes first.

Game Round:

Each player picks an Action Card to play and places it face down in front of them.

Once everyone has placed an Action Card down in front of them, simultaneously flip them all face up.

The first player takes their action first.

From the first player, go counter-clockwise from them and let each player take their action.

Once each player has had their go, place the Action Cards used in a Discard Pile and pick up an Action Card to replace it from the Action Card pile.

This signifies the end of a round. After this, the player to the right of whoever went first during the previous round is now the new first player of the next round.

Players keep going until they have run out of rounds, and the Devils Deal is sealed (The number of rounds is determined by the player count x 2)

Tip: Take the time in between rounds to confer with your friends and keep track of the games progress (or to confuse each other if you're my Demon)

Role Cards: 

In total, there should be 30 Role Cards in the deck. 20 of these will be of my Demons, and 10 of them are your fellow Unpossessed. As I previously explained, each player will have taken one Role Card each from the pre-shuffled deck, the remnants of which will be placed back into the original pile. I would like to remind players that they are not to reveal their Role Cards to anyone else unless targeted with an Action Card that says so. 

Identity Cards: 

The Identity Cards assigns you a random character that you will play for the rest of the game until either I come to claim your soul for losing out on our deal, or you somehow manage to win and escape with your life intact. You will probably notice that some of the cards have a certain colour associated with it (be it Red, Purple, or Blue), whilst some of them are just Plain. These colours have no impact on anything other than what Action Cards can be used on which , and shouldn’t impact the order of the card layout or anything else. 

Action Cards: 

The Action Cards are what you will be using in order to take your go, and there will be 60 in total although each player will only be able to hold 3 at a time. The Actions Cards are as follows;

Unmask x15 (Unmask a character, revealing and killing them).

Blackmail x7 (Choose another player and force them to Unmask an Identity Card).

Devilishly Unlucky x3 (Unmask an Identity Card in a panic. If you have this card, you must use it immediately)

Change of Heart x7 (Pick 2/3 Identity Cards in play, and without looking, shuffle their Role Cards together and put them back under the Identity Cards).

Paranoia x10 (By yourself, select 2/3 Identity Cards in play and look at their Role Cards, then without looking shuffle them and put them back under the Identity Cards).

Sneak a Peek x7 (By yourself, take a look at the Role Card of 1 Identity Card).

Devilishly Lucky x3 (Protect someone from being unmasked).

Illusionary Master x4 (Block another players go, and return their card to their hand).

What’s yours is Mine x4 (Swap your hand with another players)

Some of these Action Cards will be bound by colour, meaning that only a those bound by Red can only be used on Identity Cards also bound by Red. So for example, a Red Unmask can only be used on a Red Identity Card, whereas a Plain Unmask can be used on any colour Identity Card. In some instances you may find that none of your hand has colours that coordinate with the cards in play, and in these scenarios you can simply discard it and skip a go, or hope that you eventually pick up a Sleight of Hand. If cards that can pick multiple targets are used but there is not enough of its colour on the table, then it will only affect the limited cards being used. So for example, if a player were to use a Blue Paranoia that allowed you to peek at three Identity Cards but there was only one Blue Identity Card in play, then the player would only peek at that one card. 

Materials List

Deck of cards

Ink (For designing for the cards)

Design Statement

For our narrative essay we created the game The Devil’s Deal, a card game heavily based around deception that incorporates themes of satanic cults into its narrative. Our aim was to create a game that caused players to constantly have to mistrust every other player who could potentially be either good or evil, but with an added complexity that gave players the opportunity to somehow switch sides in a bid to add to the mistrust. 

The Devil's Deal started off as nothing more than a vague idea to create as much distrust between friends and family as was capable within a game, and so straight away we began researching into games that required a lot of bluffing and a lot secrets. So straight away we started to look into games like Mascarade, Ca$h ‘n Guns, and Coup where although every player has the same goal, each of them has a secret way of doing it that requires betrayal to do it. In particular, they focus on having players deceive their fellow teammates in an attempt to sabotage them, and stab them in the back when necessary. And this is the exact kind of mashup of both player choice and emergent behaviour we wanted to mimic in the creation of The Devil’s Deal. So with this, we had a clear aim in mind to how we wanted to tailor our gameplay experience for the player in that it should make players feel like their choices will have an immediate if not long lasting impact on the game, as well as creating interesting interactions between players as they try to lie and bluff and deduce who and what everyone is. But this also raised the issue of people in terms of numbers. Ideally, a game heavy on deception would have a significant enough number of players available to play to ensure that the gameplay not only lasts a decent amount of time to allow game mechanics to truly have equal impact without feeling cut short or pointless, but that it also feels complicated enough that there wouldn’t be a simple, clean cut way of deducing who’s bad and who's good. In our personal experiences, getting any more than three or four people to sit down for a significant amount of time to play a board/card game has always tended to be an issue, so trying to aim to be like games such as Mascarade and Town of Salem which can have up to 12 players seemed excessive and unrealistic. So in a game where people are constantly trying to deceive each other, we needed a way of extending gameplay by implementing a mechanic that challenged players priorities and also could make up the numbers most players wouldn’t have, similar to how NPCs (Non-Player Character) work. We also wanted to mix it up so that it wouldn’t be as easy to work out who is good and who is bad, giving players the chance to somehow change sides at points in the game to keep players constantly guessing whether they can truly trust the people they’re working with. This is when we came across Rick and Morty "Total Rickall", which used NPC character cards placed separate to the players to act as a form of fodder that players need to shoot their way through in order to win the game. So using this mechanic, and combining it with how we wanted player roles to constantly be changing, we merged the idea of the two to create the Role Cards (Demon/Unpossessed) and the Identity Card (Player Characters). However it wasn’t Demons and Unpossessed to begin with, but instead masquerade themed. The cult theme was inspired by wanting a narrative that would explain how players would be able to switch sides so simply, without it being as cliche as mafia and masquerade. So with this in mind, we eventually came up with the idea of possession, which then led to demons, which in turn led to cults which allowed us to keep some of the original masquerade esc ideas we had originally. This eventually snowballed into the Character and Role Cards being separate entities so that we could more easily control the gameplay. After that we developed the Action Cards as a way to allow players to act in a relatively fair and equal way, somewhat inspired by Exploding Kittens card mechanics, and again by Rick and Morty "Total Rickall" methods of taking a turn. When it came to play testing, we found pretty early on that  one of the major issues was the balance, or lack there of, in the number of card types. With the Role Cards, the randomness of using the entire deck meant that it was actually more likely most players turned out to be Demons instead of the Unpossessed because we had designed the ratio to be 2:1 Demons to Unpossessed, so in redevelopment we had to add into the rules for players to take out four Unpossessed and two Demons at the start to shuffle and pick from in order to try and balance the gameplay. The same happened with the Action Cards which seemed mismatched in terms of what there is an excess of, what throws the game too much, what had almost no impact on the overall game. In an attempt to make the Unmask card less excessive, alongside other cards like Sneak a Peek, we decided to incorporate a form of faction that would limit what Action Cards players could use on what Character Cards (i.e. Red Action Card can only be used on Red Character Card). On further play testing we found that this had helped balance out the gameplay, but further tweaking is required in terms of the actual number of specific Action Cards in the deck to keep the gameplay fun and challenging without overdoing either factor, causing it to plateau. However we did gain some positive feedback in that people tended to enjoy the concept behind The Devil’s Deal, and that with some improvements the aspect of switching sides and betraying friends could become a lot more enjoyable, which meant that there was some potential to the game. 

When it came to implementing improvements we began to implement a fair few new rules into the game to make the gameplay fairer. As I mentioned previously, we added in a faction element in that some cards were coloured specifically so that there had to be a sort of Snap element to the Action Cards in order to be able to play them. We also added in rules to the setup to make the dispersion of Unpossessed Role Cards fairer. We also found that the end game objective that meant if too many Unpossessed characters were killed then their team would lose meant that Demon players could just keep killing randomly and eventually win if they weren’t stopped quickly. To combat this we decided the best idea would be to implement a lose-lose scenario in that whichever team kills the fourth Unpossessed character would lose automatically. In Narrative terms it would be because The Devil set it as a limit to the Unpossessed to prevent them killing randomly, but also a limit to his Demons so they don’t ruin the fun of his game. In terms of game mechanics, it means that both teams have to play smarter, but also means alternate strategies come into play such as Demons risking killing humans to get closer to the limit so that the Unpossessed are more likely to accidentally kill one of their own and lose the game. This contributes towards the Triangularity theory of High Risk = High Reward. In our latest prototype, a lot of the changes made had had a positive impact on the overall gameplay, having in some aspects balanced out the difficulty between sides to make it more equal, and in other aspects to maintain a steady balance between keeping the game entertaining but also challenging. There are still improvements that could be made to the Action Cards in order to improve on their usability and impact on the overall game, but otherwise we think that we have for the most part successfully achieved making a game that meets the aim we had originally set for ourselves in creating something that creates a heavy atmosphere of distrust, whilst also giving it that added complexity most board/card games don’t have that can make them too easy sometimes. 

Images of the game

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K4 - Co-op Game - All Assignments

Summary

‘Burden Hero’ is a turn based game with the ultimate goal of cooperation, the game opens by showing the characters the adventurers (players) can choose to play as and introducing them to the great Burden Hero himself. The adventurers must traverse through the dastardly dungeon, protecting the mighty burden hero from all harm and slay the evil boss at the end of the dungeon.The king has sent out an important quest for aiding his son ‘Burden Hero’ to urgently slay the evil monsters sealed within the dungeon. If you fail, the monsters will breakout of the dungeon after the holy seal is expired and will destroy the nearby lands, leaving death in their trails. If the adventurers succeed, however, they will be paid back kindly with eternal riches for their service. 

‘Will you accept this quest adventure, or will you shamefully deny?’

This is a co-op game for 2-5 Players.

Rules Sheet

The story:

You are fellow adventurers helping the “””great””” hero through a dastardly dungeon and slay the beast that lies within. Protect the “”””GREAT””” hero as you will all be facing many dangers on this journey.

Icon Names:

Health Points (HP): ‘Health Points’ is your amount of health your adventurer has, if your health reach 0 then you are dead.Attack Points (AP): ‘Attack points’ are the amount of damage your adventure can dish out with abilities.Evasion Points (EP): ‘Evasion points’ will rely on how well you can avoid attacks from 0 - 6. The number of EP you have will be based on the dice. (you must roll within your adventurers EP numbers to avoid an attack. If you didn’t then you will take the hit).Tokens (T): Abilities can not be used constantly, your chosen adventurer will have a limited amount of tokens to signify their usage (tokens show how many times you can use your abilities). If you run out of tokens can cannot use your abilities.Bad Effects Token: This token is given to anyone who as been afflicted with a bad effect (stunned or DoT)Passives Abilities(P):Most ‘Passive’ abilities do not need tokens to be at use. They are always active (based on our chosen adventurer)

The Dungeon

The dungeon has 3 levels of depths to it, every time the adventures reach a new level of depth, the difficulties increases:

More monsters (+1 per level of depth)

More rooms

But there are factors that balances the game out:

More treasure (+1 per level of depth)

+1 extra token per level of depth. Min 0 tokens - Max 3 tokens

When encountering a room with a question mark, these mystery rooms have a certain preset for each number on the dice. Roll the dice to see what number you get. You must complete on of the mystery rooms to continued. You can also do another mystery room for possibly more rewards.

Empty

Ambush (draw monsters based on level of depth)

Treasure

Trap (lose 1 equipped treasure card)Monastery (Heals all adventurers for 2 health)

Mini Boss (draw from the monster boss card pile

Treasure

After deathing all the monsters within a room, the players can draw a treasure card from the treasure deck (+1 based on level of depth). Although some treasure cards may be useful. However, there are some treasure cards that are either useless or more harmful than useful.There are 4 types of treasure:

Armor (body/helmet): Adventurers can have up to 2 pieces of armor: Head,Body. If the player has two of the same type of armor piece, the adventurer must choose which one they must discard into the discard pile.

Consumables: Consumables are one-time use treasure cards. After being used, it must be immediately discarded into the discard pile. Adventurers can only carry 1 consumables at a time. (Consumables do not take up an action)

Weapons: There are normal weapons for all adventurers to use.

Rubbish: Treasure cards that do nothing can be discard right away.

Weapons, Consumables & Armors can give both good and bad stats. When receiving and equipment cards (armor & weapon treasure cards), you cannot discard it if you are not wearing anything whether good or bad. You can only discard it when receiving the same type of equipment card.

Death

If an adventurer dies during combat and the team kills the monster and completes a room, the dead adventurer will be revived but loses all but keeps one treasure card. The team can also give their own equipment to the revived teammate  if necessary.

Goal

Your goal is to move up the tower and kill the greatest monster within while keeping your hero alive. You slowly move up the dungeon, killing monsters and looting rooms based on each floor & level. Each floor based on the level of depth will be harder than the last level but also more rewarding.

Death/ Dazed

When a player runs out of HP, they are in a ‘dazed’ state where they cannot do anything until the rest of the team defeats the monster or the monsters defeat the team. If the team defeats all the monsters within the room, the dazed player awakens but loses one equipped piece of equipment (body armor, helmet, weapon or consumable).If the entire team is defeated by the monsters. You lose.

Fighting

When encountering each room, the players will be greeted by a monster (+1 on level of depth). The players must take turns killing the monster while fending off the monsters attacks.The turn stat will be like this:

Player 1

Monster

Hero

Monster

Player 1

Etc.

If there are more players:

Player 1

Monster

Player 2 

Monster

Player 3

Monster

Player 4

Monster

Player 5

Monster

Hero

Monster

Player 1

ETC.

Adventurers

The adventurer list:

Knight

Mage

Archer

Dryad

Thief

Knight:

10 HP, 3 AP, 2 EP (2 tokens)

Impenetrable Shield: All damage will be directed to the knight, reducing damage taken by 75% for 1 turn, CD (4 turns) 

Moral Speech: Boosts Ally damage (including abilities) by 1 for 3 turn.(P) 

Undying Duty: regain 1 hp every 2 turns

Mage:

6 HP, 4 AP, 3 EP (3 tokens)

Icycle Dart: Deals 3 damage with 50% chance of stunning the enemy for 1 turn. (role an odd number to stun enemy)

Enchanted Weapon: Give ally a buff that has a low chance of stunning the enemy for 1 turn. (role a 1 or 2 to stun enemy)(P) 

Necromancy: After killing an enemy monster, Mage has the chance to allure the monster to fight on our side with half stats. (role a 5 or 6 to successfully allure the monster). The monsters must kill the dead monster (your side) before targeting the adventurers & hero.

Archer:

6 HP, 3 AP, 3 EP (2 tokens)

Kukri throw: archer throws 2 of his kukri out, dealing 3 AP each while dealing 1 AP per turn for 2 turns. (roll dice on an even number to land the kukris successfully)

Poison arrow: Deals 4 damage while dealing 2 AP on the next turn.(roll dice on an odd number to land the poison arrow successfully) 

(P) Scouting: At any time of the dungeon, Archer can see the content of the nearby room for information.

Dryad:

7 HP, 2 AP, 2 EP (2 tokens)

Rooted: does 2 AP and stuns the enemy monster for 1 turn.

Life Essence: heals team for 3 hp.(P) 

Leech: Damage dealt by the Dryad will be halved will return was hp

Thief:

5 HP, 3 AP, 4 EP (1 token)

Smoke bomb: a powdered explosive that stuns all enemies for 1 turn.(P) Scavenger: after completing a room, thief can pull an additional treasure card and give it to anyone.(P) 

Sneak Attack: Thiefs’ normal attacks deals double AP to enemy monsters who are under bad effects (stunned or DoT)

Hero (not playable)

7 HP, 1 AD, 1 EP(P)

Heros Blessing: heals team 1 HP every 3 turns.

Materials List

Dense Cardboard (for the board)

Ink (print the design onto the Burden Hero board)

Litho Coating

Boards:

A board

Character stats board

Monster Stat boards

Cards:

Character Cards

Monster Cards

Boss Cards

Treasure Cards (with their own weapon, armor, consumable icon)

Tokens:

HP Tokens (1 side of the token represents 2 Points, the other side will represent 1 Point)

AP Tokens ^

EP Tokens ^

“You are here” Token

Bad effect tokens

Dice:

1 Dice

HP Tokens:

Big health token: 1 side has 10 HP, the other side has 5 HP

Normal health token: 1 side has 2 HP, the other side has 1 HP

Design Statement

We will be talking about the Co-op board game called Burden Hero. Now, the Co-op game Burden Hero would consist of at least 2 people can would be able to play so that there wouldn’t be any unfair advantage given to the enemy if you were playing by yourself, However, the maximum people that can play this game is 5 players. The acceptable age range we have given it is 8+, the reason why we have done that is because anyone lower than 8 would have difficulty playing this game as this is a complex game as it has effects and skills. The time to understand the game and how it works would take at least 30 minutes of gameplay, that way the fundamentals of the game is understood. We will be mentioning the research that was conducted so that we would be able to brainstorm ideas as well as which games were inspired and what was implemented for this Co-op to be created. We will also mention on how the game plays and what rules were implemented in this game so that there would be a fairness advantage and becomes a balanced game. While smoothing out the edges of the Co-op game, we’ll be able to present you the game without any of the flaws, making this fun for the players and as well as being progressive. If we’re going to make this a flawless Co-op game, we would need to mention about the playtesters and the feedback we receive from the playtesters and then make improvements on the Co-op game from the feedback given from the playtesters. Finally, we’ll mention the conclusion about the Co-op game about our and the playertesters final thoughts.

Pokemon, Munchkins, Darkest Dungeons, The Guild of Dungeoneering

For the research, we decided to investigate games with a system where players must co-operate together in order to win the game. MOBAS like ‘League of Legends’ and ‘Dota’ are good example of a cooperative game. The group of players must fight against another group of players, combining each players talent on timing and knowledge to outwit and defeat their opponents. However, a proper cooperative game would be the game fighting against the players. ‘Darkest Dungeons’ demonstrates to the player the punishments of not cooperating together. Another game we researched is ‘Left 4 Dead’ where the players are placed into a post apocalyptic world and must travel from point A to point B, covering for each others’ backs from hordes of zombies and the occasional zombie variants.

The characters undergo stress when adventuring the dungeons and the player must manage stress levels, provide supplies & fend off monsters. We wanted to implement that seriousness that ‘Darkest Dungeons’ gives off, however we had to tone down the level of difficulty due to our target audience  The inspiration for our board game was from: Pokemon for the cute cartoon aesthetics where each monsters are unique or absurd but still works due to the art style.

Munchkins for the layout of the board game & gameplay, Darkest Dungeons for the level of factors that adds to the difficulty & the opinions of high risk, high reward gameplay & The Guild of Dungeoneering for it treasure system and pleasing sketchbook aesthetics.

You are fellow adventurers helping the ‘great’ hero through a dastardly dungeon and slay the beast that lies within. Protect the ‘Great’ hero as you will all be facing many dangers on this journey. It is a turn based co-op game where players must travel from room to room defeating the monsters until you enter the final room to defeat the big boss. Players will encounter treasure after complete number rooms or encountering mystery rooms. The treasure is a way to balance out the late game with a hint of chance, giving the players good or bad gear.

During the first play testing session, we presented the first prototype of the co-op game. The mechanics of the game very basic but was able to keep the functionality of the game intact. The board was simply a descending ladder of numbered rooms with no mystery rooms. There were no treasure cards either, meaning the players must methodically think of each action cautiously. Also, if a player happens to be defeated by the monsters, they are permanently removed from the game, making the burden hero more vulnerable. Perma death was scrapped with a lighter penalty, if a player is defeated by a monster, they will be dazed and will not able to fight until the rest of the team defeats the monsters within the room. However, if all of the players or the burden hero is defeated by the monsters, they will lose the game. Previously, there was a ‘cool down’ mechanic within the game where abilities from adventurers and monsters run on a cool down (meaning the abilities can not be used after a certain amount of turns). This was removed due to how tedious on having to remember each individual cool down length and was replaced with ‘tokens’. Monsters (except the boss) no longer have abilities and abilities uses tokens as source of energy, each character have different numbers of tokens so the player can keep track on how much they can use and strategically think on when to use them.

After all the researching, play testing, getting critical feedback from people that played ‘Burden Hero’ and improving the co-op game from the given feedback. We have produced our final product and we are pleased with final outcome of ‘Burden Hero’. We were able to craft the prototype into a full fledged game while conserving our base ideas, game mechanics and theme for the game.

Images of the game

[julianafutureworks-blog]

K4 - Social Game - All Assignments

Summary

Elementalist is a card based game that can be played by 2-4 players, it is also turn based. Each player starts with 7 cards that will remain secret to the rest of the players. There’s 4 types of cards inspired by the elements, two of them are polar opposites, fire and water, the other two are neutral elements, wind and earth. In order to play and win in Elementalist you need to continue the chain of cards until they have none left in their hands, however there’s specific rules to continue the chain. You cannot create chains with the polar opposite elements next to each other, instead they must use neutral elements to connect them. If you don’t have cards to continue the chain you must draw one card from the pile and place if you can, if not, the next player continues. Once the players place 3 cards these will produce one of the effects listed in the rules sheet. These effects will either be in favour or disadvantage for the player who produced them, or in some cases it will affect all the players. Thus creating opportunities for losing players to try to catch up or finish off their win by baiting the opponents into creating negative effects for themselves. 

Rules Sheet

Content: 80 cards, 20 per element.

Players need to use up all the cards in their hand in order to win. (start with 7)

In order to use up their cards they need to continue the chain of cards following these 2 rules: 

Fire element is incompatible with water (cannot create a chain when next to each other) 

Earth and wind are neutral (compatible with all other cards)If you can’t continue the chain you need to draw another card, if you still can’t continue, the order player draws. 

After 3 cards an effect occurs:

2 water 1 earth: Harmony 

1 water 1 earth 1 fire: New Beginning

2 water 1 wind: Storm

1 water 1 wind 1 fire: Cataclysm

2  fire 1 wind: Firestorm

2 fire 1 earth: Magma

A chain of 3 neutral cards doesn’t produce any effects. 

Harmony: mother nature blesses you with tranquility. (no effect)

New Beginning: players mix the cards in their hands with the stack and shuffle it (give each player 7 cards again). 

Storm: Zeus sees potential in you. (immune to next cataclysm)

Cataclysm: you played around with Harmony and you’ve enraged the Gods. (Each player draws 3 cards)

Firestorm: the card further to the right in each player’s hand is burned. (Return to the stack of cards)

Magma: players exchange any card from each other’s hand. (Each player chooses which they want to take)

Any other chain combination that isn't listed above will produce this effect:

Cloudy Sky: The player that finished off the chain draws a card from the stack.

Example of chains: 

2 earth 1 water 

2 earth 1 fire

2 wind 1 water

2 wind 1 fire 

1 wind  1 water 1 earth

1 wind 1 fire 1 earth 

Additionally, 3 cards of the same element do not have any effect.

Materials List

Deck of Cards

Ink (for designing the cards)

Design Statement

Today, we will be talking about the social board game, Which is called Elementalist. We will also mention what kind of research I needed to do to brainstorm this idea as well as how we was inspired to create this game. We will mention the description of the game so we could present what rules have been implemented in the game. We would be able to present the finished product of the social board game. Also mention the play testing so that we would be given feedback at the end of the game and make those improvements from the feedback that were given from the play testers. The conclusion will be about how successful it will/will not be.

Uno, Hearthstone, DominoesThe research is about how we came up with this idea. So while we was researching, we came across this particular game called Hearthstone and Hearthstone is basically a turn based card game between two opponents. These heroes have a special power which is based on a element such as fire, water, earth and wind. These elements will have certain effects on the opponent, such as summoning another minion, freezing enemies if the card attack an enemy minion. For Uno, this game is also a turn based card game where you and the opponents hide their cards from others and predict their moves. This consists of you having to play a card or more specifically discarding a card from your deck and drawing another card from the deck pile. In order for you or the opponents to win, you must be the first person to use up all their cards to win the game. Another game similar to ‘Uno’ is called Dominos. The players must get rid of all their dominoes before the other players do. Each domino piece has their own number of dots, players can chain domino pieces with the same number of dots.

From the few games that we have researched, I was finally able to make up a social board game with a few implementations inspired by those games I have researched. The ‘effects’ system was inspired by the turn based card game called Hearthstone. As I have mentioned in my research, the way how the effects system works in Hearthstone is that there will be a cards that will have effects with them. Such as if the enemy has summoned minions on their side, you will be able to wipe them off by having a card effect that is able to freeze the enemy minions and finishing them off quickly. How this got inspired to have the ‘effects’ system implemented into Elementalist is by having cards that have the elements such as fire, water, earth and wind. If you are able to match up an element such as 2 fire and 1 wind, then this will create a firestorm and that will have an effect which causes the card furthest to the right in each player’s hand to be burnt. The ‘win’ system was inspired by another game that is slightly similar to Hearthstone is called Uno. The way how the ‘win’ system works in Uno is that each player must start with 7 cards and they will have to strategize a way to use all of their cards to win without the opposition using a special card to increase the amount of cards in your hand. How this got inspired to have the ‘win’ system implemented into Elementalist is by having each player start with 7 cards and they must match up elements to have nothing in your hand which can ultimately let you win the game and to use the elements’ effects before the opponent can use them. Lastly, the ‘match’ system was inspired by a turn based game which is called Dominoes. The way how the ‘match’ system works in Dominoes is that the way how you take turns is by matching the same dots on your domino to your opponent’s domino. For example, if your opponent has placed a domino that has two black dots on the left side of the domino and five black dots on the right side of the domino. You must then match up either the 5 black dots or the 2 black dots with your domino for the game keep progressing. How this got inspired to have the ‘match’ system implemented into Elementalist is by having the player to match 2 of the same elements such fire and a wind element because since earth and wind neutral, meaning they are compatible with the other cards such as water and fire elements. This will then create another bigger element which will have an effect and this will either benefit you or benefit the opponent.  

Players need to use up all the cards in their hand in order to win. (start with 7)In order to use up their cards they need to continue the chain of cards following these 2 rules:Fire element is incompatible with water (cannot create a chain when next to each other)Earth and wind are neutral (compatible with all other cards). If you can’t continue the chain you need to draw another card, if you still can’t continue, the order player draws.

Once the first prototype of the game was ready we play tested it in class. The base mechanic of the game worked quite well  but as it progressed we noticed that we missed on to some possible combinations between the cards. We had to decide ‘’effects’’  for these new combinations, we were going to add a unique effect to each and one of them, but as more appeared we realized the game was becoming too complex and overloaded. We agreed we needed to keep the game rather simple and easy to keep up, having too many different effects would force the players to spend more time reading the rules sheet than actually playing the game. So we decided to group all of the remaining effects that aren’t listed in the rules sheet and give them the effect of ‘’the player draws one card from the pile’’ referring to the player that places the last card in the chain. We also noticed that if the players start with only 5 cards the game ends too fast, we also noticed that 11 cards per element wasn’t enough, so we increased the amount of cards per element to 20 and the players start with 7 cards in their hand. These changes enabled the game to have more playtime and to flow smoother.

After all the play testing, getting feedback from people that have played Elementalist and finally improving the game from the feedback given to us. We have our finished product and we are happy and satisfied with Elementalist. We were able to bring the first prototype into a full fledged game while conserving our base plans, mechanics and theme for the game. 

Images of the game

[julianafutureworks-blog]

K4 - Abstract Game - All Assignments

Summary

Duality is a abstract board game that only consists of 2 players and is also a turn based game. The game focuses on direct player vs player gameplay by making both players use the same piece. The way to make progress in this game or win the game is that player 1 will have to try his best to move the counter on the other side of the board. Whereas player 2 will need to predict player 1 and must prevent them from getting closer to the endpoint by moving the same piece and trying to land on the scattered coloured boxes across the board or by achieving to move the piece out of the board, by doing this Player 2 wins the round. The only way you can move the piece is by moving it forward, to the sides and diagonally, players cannot move the piece backwards. Both players cannot move back their counter to the original position where the previous player had placed it on. We are satisfied with the abstract game because of the amount of play testing we have had, we were able to erase any unbalanced feature and improve the competitiveness by adding the rounds system while keeping the games style minimalist.

Rules Sheet

The goal of Duality is to have to player controlling one piece, 1 player trying to reach the end while the other player is preventing it.

Basic Rules

Each player can only move the piece one grid at a time, only towards the left or right in the same row, or towards the next row.

You can't move the piece back to the original position that the other player moved it from. You also cannot move back to a row once you’ve passed it

Player A

Player A needs to reach the ''endpoint’’ with the piece or, get as close as they can.

Player B

Player B needs to stop it player A from reaching the ‘end’ point

There are coloured blocks scattered throughout the board, Player B must land on the coloured boxes to win.

Player B can also move the piece off the board to win.

Rounds and winning

Each player swaps role throughout the amount of rounds they have established, at the end of the rounds the player who got closer to the endpoint wins. The rounds can be any amount the players decide.

Materials List

Dense Cardboard (for the board & duality piece)

Ink (print the design onto the duality board) 

Laminated plastic

Design Statement

Duality is an abstract player versus player based board game that focuses on strategy and direct conflict/challenge between both players by forcing them to play with the same piece on the board while each one of them has a different objective to follow in order to win the game. The inspiration of the game starts in a classic, Chess, a board game recognized worldwide as one of the most challenging player versus player strategy based games. Its board design is simple and its rules are easy to grasp, it provides a minimalist battleground for a perfect clash of strategy and mind-games.The base idea before Duality was created was: I want to make the two players compete with each other, but not just that, I want them to be bumping into each other, strategic-wise, to the point that they start to conflict each other. This idea evolved into the possibility of creating a game-mechanic that enabled the two players to be playing with one single piece, which creates a similar situation to two kids pulling one toy they both want to play with while none of them wants to give into the other. That first step set, now I had to think of a mechanic that would fit using one single piece. I pictured a situation where two people who control the same object, similar to a steering wheel, which led me to think about a ship, and how two people were fighting over controlling it, one wants to arrive to the destination meanwhile the other one would want to crash the ship onto a rock or something similar.When this idea is flattened and simplified onto a board game, we’re left with a single piece on a grid board, in which there is several coloured boxes. One of the player's’ aim is to reach the other end of the board, while the other player’s aim is to achieve to either touch the colour boxes along the board, or, achieve to move the piece out of the board itself. Each player can only move once, linear and diagonal, with the exception of moving the piece back to its original position and moving back to the row it has already been in. Visually we can imagine it's similar to folding the board under itself once the piece has passed through the row, leaving it out of the game, this way the players are forced to continue forward and it prevents a possible loop in the game. Additionally, the starting and end point must always be in the middle columns, therefore the grid must be an odd number x even or odd number (the number of rows can vary to add or decrease difficulty). Once we brought the game in class to play test, we encountered several problems such as the game feeling unbalanced. It felt as if Player B (the one who has to touch the boxes or push the piece outside the board) had an advantage over Player A, either due to too many or misplaced boxes on the board. The way we first approached this problem was by moving some boxes to enable a ‘’safer’’ and more open path for Player A. This helped the issues, however, arriving at the end point was still a bit difficult, so we had the idea of inventing a type of ranking system. The system involved playing several rounds of Duality and the player’s would swap ‘’roles’’ each round, the goal would be to try and advance as much as possible as player A, the person who achieves to be closer to the End point is the winner. This way the game feels more fair, since the winning situation does not depend on one single game but rather on many rounds (could be only 4, or up to 10 if so the players desire), additionally, players can find more mechanics and paths to use against each other, making the game more competitive and replayable. Through the creation of Duality we learned how to look at pre-existing games, how to break them down, analyze each one of the elements, understand what an abstract game is in essential and decide what type of gameplay we seek, such as the number of players, the mechanics and even elements used (board, type of grid, pieces, etc). We achieved to see games from a critical point of view, propose different aspects of what an already existing mechanic could have potentially been. How to continue developing a game based around a single idea, such as the base concept of the two players using the same piece to play and the mechanic that originated to complement the core mechanic. The core part of the whole design process of the game was play testing, having the opportunity to bring the first prototype (without the round system) was crucial to make sure our game wouldn’t be unfair, stuck in a loop, too hard or broken in any sort. Before the play test in class the game seemed stable but once it was played in class we were able to notice flaws such as Player B having more dominance in the game in comparison to player A, and the difficulty of reaching the end point. It was an interesting experience to listen to the player’s feedback about the game, check if our rule sheet was easy to grasp and how they react to the gameplay. To be given feedback about what we could possibly do to fix our game’s gaps from a person who didn't design the game is quite useful due to the fact that they are approaching the game from a fresh point of view, contrary to us developers. This enables us to spot any possible issues or solutions we might have missed in the process of creating the game. We are satisfied to have been able to maintain the core ideas of our board game, whilst implementing a new and more fair winning system and keeping the game with a minimalist design style.

Images of the game

[julianafutureworks-blog]

XB1101 - Limbo Trailer - Sound FX

In my other posts I talked about how the music in the therapist scenes in Until Dawn is quite subtle, and how the ambient sounds were attracting more attention than what they usually do in our daily life. Thus making the player feel unfamiliar and uneasy with the setting of the scene which is something I wanted to have present in the first scenes where we can only hear a calm piano.I also strengthened this effect by making the enemies of the game sound mechanical / made of steel. Whilst in the second part of the trailer the violin is the main factor that influences the scenes, the ambient sounds are set to a more natural volume.

 I recorded around 70 sound files. I didn’t use the Foley room in university, instead I had the opportunity to experiment and record different sounds with real life objects like leaves, branches in various parks, woods and lakes in Warrington. I also used different objects in my own apartment, such as light switches, chair creaking, the drawers of the kitchen getting closed, rolling metal bars on the desk and my favourite one, polishing two knives together to achieve the sound of the mosquito’s wings in the trailer. It was a nice experience because I had been in those places before but since this time my purpose was to record sounds, it made me think of innovative ways to use the things around me and made me pay more attention to what I hear. Most of the sounds we hear every day are just white noise that we unconsciously ignore but once they are gone, we can notice their absence. This realization helped me bring a more realistic feeling to the trailer, which at first sounded off because it lacked that white noise that fills in the gaps between the ‘active’ sounds.

From 70 sounds recorded I only ended up using around 31 plus 2 that I sourced online, the glass breaking, and the mechanical sounds used for the spider in 2 scenes, as well as the songs I posted in my second post. I learned how to make 1 sound file sound different by modifying the pitch and adding different effects to it that change the way we perceive the sound itself. For example, I used a reverb effect on most sounds used in the trailer to give them the feeling that they are indeed in a big open space, that addition of echo made the sounds feel more natural. I changed each sound’s volume to blend well with the object that makes it, modifying things like the amount of fading of the sound enabled creating a sense of depth.

Here’s a screenshot of how the final trailer looks like, as the trailer progresses there’s more and faster cut scenes hence why the start of it is light on sounds whilst later scenes have a bigger amount of sounds added in. This also complemented well with the style of music I added.

Conclusion:

I really enjoyed doing this project and it made me perceive and appreciate sound design more than I already did. Thanks to it I was able to look deeper into what factors make every genre the way that it is along with the emotions it expresses. After the research I did I learnt what types of sounds my genre, psychological-terror, needed to portray it. I think I was able to stick well to the theme I chose thanks to the variation between the 2 songs I blended and the rest of the sound effects, especially the machine sounding spider and mosquito. I’ve achieved to show the scenery I was aiming for when I first moulded my ideas for the trailer. 

Research references:

Watched and analyzed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGQxSU6m9bs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-ke4WBDTUA&t=

Sound References

 Video:

Playdead ApS [Created: 10/05/2010 Retrieved: 10/11/17]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4HSyVXKYz8

LIMBO - Trailer No Audio.mp4

 Music:

Yuuki Hayashi [Created: 11/6/15 Retrieved: 10/11/17]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewBOcdz29Sw

death parade.flac

Sound Effects

Audio Productions [Created: 16/11/13 Retrieved: 12/11/17]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R14G5ac76Uc

Glass Breaking_ sound effect.flac

 Lux Sabers [Created: 18/1/17 Retrieved: 14/11/17]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucRVkadPyik

steampunk Sound Font.flac



[julianafutureworks-blog]

XB1101 - Limbo Trailer - Music

The two games I mentioned in my other post, Bioshock 1 and Until Dawn, had similar aspects to what I had in mind for the 2 sides of the trailer, the first one being the opening scene and the boy running through the forest, up until the heavy combat which is where the second part starts. I made this separation of the trailer because I wanted to create an increasing sense of tension and despair that rises as the protagonist progresses through the obstacles.

Therefore, I chose to portray a sense of innocence and sadness in the first part of the trailer, focusing on making the protagonist feel small and fragile, while the bitter after taste of an awful event is still present in the ambient. The way the first scene starts, we see the boy on the ground, which felt like the ‘calm’ after a main character suffered and learned something new through pain and then realizes they cannot stay on the ground and instead need to keep going forward no matter what happened in the past. Rallying forward with tear in their eyes and pain in their heart.

I decided that to portray those emotions I would implement a piano playing in a rather soft and calm matter as the main instrument, keeping any other instruments such as the violin only there to support the main sound of it. I went through many songs but there was one that truly fit what I had been looking for.

This song is from a show I recently watched, I listened to it while the Limbo trailer was playing, and it suited it quite a bit. The song itself has a small progression similar to the one I was looking to portray. At the start, the piano is the main instrument while still being played softly, but as the song progresses, the violin escalates and takes a bigger part of the ‘stage’.

The main concept was there, but I needed yet a more intrusive violin to express a nerve wrecking feeling to support the fast skipping throughout the different cutscenes as the trailer progresses. This is where I had to spend more time searching because I was avoiding the typical horror movie music effect that predicts there will be a jump scare or something similar in the next cutscene.

There’s a certain type of sound that can balance itself on the thin line between giving the listener anxiety, and failing to do so, which in my opinion ends up just sounding chaotic and rather repetitive. I had never heard this song before, but it managed to express that feeling of anxiety, pressure and sadness through the first minute of it listening to it.

 With these two songs, I had my main theme done. However, I couldn’t cut the songs and just add them together because it sounded satiric, the sudden jump from the calm piano in the first song and the brisk violin in the second song gave off the opposite effect of what I mean to express. To mitigate that, I had to cut the songs in many different samples that would be used to merge the two ends of the songs and make them sound like one whole. The piano couldn’t instantly disappear when the second song started as it sounded really off, so I had to prolong the fading of it while also adding parts of the violin in the first to make it sound more natural.

Here’s a screenshot that shows how I had to place the different samples of each song to successfully merge them together.

[julianafutureworks-blog]

XB1101 - Limbo Trailer - Ideas & Research

We were proposed to create new sound for the limbo trailer. I looked into the lore of the game (which to be honest wasn’t too detailed because that’s what the developers were aiming for) and decided I would try to portray a psychological-horror type of genre with the music and sfx.

 I did some research to figure out what actually achieved that tense, melancholic and frightening feeling I was aiming to express. I mostly looked into the original soundtrack for Bioshock 1 and the overall ambient sound in the therapist scenes in Until Dawn.

When in non-combat scenes, Bioshock would sometimes have very quiet background music coming from nearby radios that didn’t have the intention of making the player nervous, it was there to make the player feel immersed and ‘’comfortable’’ into the era the city Rapture was built in, yet it still had a hint of terror. While walking into rooms with very poor lightning, the music would play and would make the player feel uneasy, since there was a possibility someone was near. In addition, that music represented what Rapture was, and will never be again, that is the ghost of the utopia.

While most scenes were silent or accompanied by the quiet back ground music, the scenes leading to combat and the pure combat scenes were both accompanied by violins that would add tenseness and a brisk tempo to the music while also being the main instrument we can hear, any other would be quieter and there to support the violin.

Bioshock has more action based terror, the therapist scenes in Until Dawn however have a more ‘’is this person trying to help me, or plotting something behind my back’’ type of thrill instead of an upfront enemy who is running at you to kill you. In the first scene we are sitting in what looks like an office, with the therapist looking outside the window while we can hear a soft piano playing in the background, once the therapist starts speaking it’s barely audible. This leads us to pay more attention to ambient sounds such as the spoon hitting the cup, everything the therapist says, every move he makes and external noises such as sirens.