Wake Up Devlog- Leadup to Week 1

During the week leading up to the introductory lecture for my 603, I had a couple of ideas for what Game I could develop.

The first of these was a Visual Novel with Turn-Based combat in a Roguelike structure. I’d want it to be a heavily-Narrative experience, with a somewhat surrealist plot / artstyle in the vein of the ‘Milk Bag’ Games or ‘No Skin’; exploring themes of mental health, specifically depression.

The general idea for a plot I developed from this, is in a Fantasy world where some people have the ability to enter other people’s minds; a Woman with these abilities has become literally trapped in her own mind, and has to fight her way out through surreal environments which represent her and her environment / experiences. As the Player gets further in through trial and error (as it would be a Roguelike), they would discover more about who they are playing as, and the late-Capitalist World she inhabits and how this affects her and other working people.

The second idea I had was far less heavy than the first. It was a not fully-formed concept of a third person shooter (potentially also a roguelike) where you play as various different classes of Wizards, very much inspired by Risk of Rain 2.

I worked in Unreal Engine 5 to program some of the very basic mechanics of each of these ideas; creating a basic Visual Novel system for the former, and a tiny start of a prototype for the latter, with some basic skills with appropriate charges and cooldowns coded in; as well as using a character asset pack off of the Epic Games Store, and setting up Blendspaces and Animation Blueprints for it to change its animation depending on the direction the player is walking.

Overall, I think that my first idea would be more interesting, and delve into aspects of Narrative design I am interested in pursuing and showing in my portfolio; however I think the Wizard shooter is more realistic for me to be able to create a very well-polished vertical slice of.

Next Week