Game Design Document

Game Description

Solitude is a hand-drawn, interactive animation game that explores the concepts of loneliness and social connection. Search for hidden discoveries within a surreal and stylized environment. Collect, disassemble and combine objects to trigger memory events and discover more about yourself

Team Roles/Responsibilities

Hamza - Development Lead/Level Designer

Chen - Developer

Tony - Developer

Kate - Art/Animations

Emily - Art/Animations

Steven - Music/SFX/Team Lead

Pablo - Music/SFX

Narrative Synopsis

You, an unnamed and solitary human pass the time each day in your bedroom. Unable to leave the confines of your room, you reach out online and play an online game. While alone at first, soon you encounter another individual, (Pim) who also seems alone. Slowly your online relationship grows as you learn to trust each other. The gameplay takes on the games you play together online, interspersed with story, and dialogue elements, as well as flashbacks to your own past. Each day you play with your friend, you gain more coloured elements on your clothing, and the world itself slowly starts to colour.

Narrative Themes

Solitude deals with themes of loneliness, isolation, and friendship. These experiences are conveyed to the player through the narrative and perspective of a gamer alone in their bedroom. Games are a lifeline for many people, an important source of both entertainment and social connection. Solitude seeks to examine that unique sense of shared experiences and existence that games bring to friendships, and to show that online friendships, both found through games and otherwise, are valid, real, and highly important to so many peoples’ lives. 

Narrative Overview

The narrative is being built out in two forms. The first is a smaller story slice, consisting of the first 10 scenes, that will convey the overall theme/message of the game while being a realistic goal point to strive for, given the time constraints of the course. An additional 7 scenes have been written that further the story and its themes/message that lead to a more final conclusion. These scenes will be added if time permits. 

Gameplay

Aesthetics

This is a narrative focused game. We want to elicit those emotional responses from the player where they come to an understanding that the character represents who they are and have been for quite a while now during the pandemic. Basically this person has been trapped within a room and their only outlet is their computer or laptop or phone. The goal is that everyone who plays this game will draw their own meaning from it.

Dynamics

How do we do this? The art and music are key here, since it's through these mediums that people feel and see and hear who they are. 

For example, the walls are white because of many different reasons and each player will attribute their own reasoning to that. We also want to make the player go through a short journey and the colours and the music will be critical in doing that. 

Another example is, by brightening the character, the player realizes that they are slowly coming out of that shell, out of that monotony that they have been in.

Mechanics

We would like the player to draw their own interpretations of everything in the context of their lives. The mechanics are simple, interacting with objects and going through cutscenes, dialogue or achieving objectives. The main goal is to allow the player to immerse themselves into the game.

Controls

The controls are very simple and designed in such a way that will allow the player to focus more on the game rather than think about what to do next. 

This is why the WASD are the main movement keys with E as the interaction button. The goal of this simple design is to have the player be truly immersed in the game by avoiding any unnecessary distractions.

Character/Asset Design

Solitude begins minimalistic and monochromatic. Our character and their environment is sketchy and simplistic which serves as both a blank slate for the player to project themselves onto as well as a visual metaphor for the headspace of our character at the beginning of their journey. 

The world is devoid of flavour to this character, being locked up in their room with no social interaction has left them with a bleak worldview and a lacking sense of self. We hope the art style helps convey this. 

The player’s journey into the computer is accompanied with a slight art style change. While the monochromatic palette remains, the style becomes more pixelated to help differentiate which reality is currently occupied. It is not until the player is introduced to “Pim” that colour begins to enter the world.

“Pim” is designed to be colourful, natural and positive accompanied by plant life to signify growth and the spread for their positive aura. Once interacted with, “Pim” impacts the player and changes them positively. This change is very small at first  which will be visually conveyed by a small coloured addition to their design but as the player interacts more with “Pim” they gain more colour and changes to their design to reflect their personal growth. 

Level Design

The objectives of each level are fairly simple—to interact with some sort of object or complete a simple puzzle to progress to the next scene. In the first level, interacting with the laptop will transport you to the game world that scenes 2 and 3 will consist of. The levels are designed such that they immerse the player through the art and music and allow them to experience this game rather than play it. 

Consider the first scene, pictured above. A few objects have been currently implemented and each object aims to elicit an emotional response from the player that will immediately hook them into the game. 

Additionally, as the player moves the character, they quickly notice the character’s slow movement speed and droopy posture. This can be interpreted as an unmotivated or disillusioned state. 

When the  character interacts with the bed, that simple dialogue of “I really want to go to bed right now…” should allow the player to empathize with this character. These are the first steps into transporting the player from playing the game to living it. 

Players have the ability to turn the lights off in the first scene which is a fun little thing that changes the music and plunges you into this light off mode and will be critical in later scenes but is present to build on the mood of this game. Overall, the goal of every level is to draw the player in and have them empathize with the character or even better, allow them to feel as if they are the character.

Music/Sound

The music of Solitude will match the minimalistic art design, in that it will be melodically static, with an overall ambient and atmospheric feel throughout. The score will seek to capture a soundscape of the locations (and mental state) the player finds themselves in, occasionally using elements of the environment as instruments, subtly weaving them into the score. 

When the player enters the ‘video game’ portion of the game, the music will change to reflect the new medium the player finds themselves in. A greater use of synthesized material utilizing FM synthesis, and ring modulation from the 1980s and 1990s will be used to match the more pixelated art style. However, the music will not become the stereotypical ‘chip-tune’, but will keep its atmospheric modern aesthetic, whilst including elements of retro video game music.

The audio system will be designed to mix SFX elements into the music tracks upon key character interactions. 

SFX will be reverb soaked at times to heighten the slightly surreal feel of the game.

Development Timeline

Goal: Implement 10 scenes in total

Already Implemented:

• Object interaction
• Triggers for transitions between scenes
• Art assets for the scenes 1 and 2.
• Character model for bedroom scenes
• Character walking and idle animations for bedroom scenes
• Character model for minigame scenes
• Character walking and idle animations for bedroom scenes
• Music for scene 1
• Animations for objects in scene 1 and 2
• Bridge physics in scene 3

Before Alpha Release:

• Implement scene transitions
• Implement music for scenes 2-7
• Implemented sound effects for all scenes up to scene 7
• Implement areas for scene 4-7
• 8 directional idle and walking animations for the player character after “Pim” encounter as well as the pixelated version.
• Interaction animations for the player character (getting out of bed, pulling lever etc.)
• Environment art for areas up until Scene 7 in the game including, Player’s bedroom objects, computer Hallway objects, Pim’s mousehole, Lever room objects.
• All animations associated with the above objects.
• UI elements including on screen control prompts, dialogue boxes, Text message system UI.

Before Beta Release:

• Implement areas for scene 8-10
• Pim character animations including idle, walking and pulling lever.
• Fire particle system.
• Bedroom door asset and animation.
• Bedroom objects with colour added.
• New room potentially, kitchen or living room.

Current system of development consists of a weekly development cycle. Individuals in the team take tasks from a list of tasks and work on their assigned tasks for the week. The team reconvenes at the end of the week to perform play testing and to discuss progress, potential bugs and any other issues and then repeats the process.