Creative Brief

Genre

Solitude is a single-player, hand-drawn, interactive animation game in the style of a point and click adventure 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.

Overall Experience

Like a visual novel, the main objective of our game is to use game as a carrier to tell a moving and insightful story with immersive experience to discover humanity and yourself. We are going to trigger emotional resonance through clean and meaningful scripted scenes with interactions and ambient music to let players learn something related to humanity.

Game Mechanics

• Interactable Objects

Players are going to explore and interact with clickable objects in the scenes to trigger events which may influence the appearance of the protagonist and scenes.

• Dialogue Choices

Players can have different reactions based on own choices, which may influence the events.

• Item Collections

Players may collect items with a fixed amount of equipment slots when clicking on interactable objects or after some events. Players can combine and disassemble items and may trigger memory events when having corresponding items.

• Mini games

Some events will require players to play mini games such as small clicking puzzles. The difficulty will be not too hard since we want players to enjoy story but not stuck on solving puzzles.

Controls

• WASD for movement
•  E for interact
• Q for bring up the cellphone

Some areas will be 2D with the player only having control of left and right movement. Other areas will be 3D, populated with 2D sprite images, that the player can walk around in a 3D manner. Players will interact with objects by using E on the keyboard. They need to be within a certain proximity of the object for the button press to register.

Main Theme and Story Background

The game deals with themes of physical and digital isolation while at the same time exploring the power digital friendships and communities can have amongst that isolation. 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 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.

Art and Music

Solitude will have a hand drawn 2.5D world with 2D objects and characters similar to point and click adventure games. The game begins monochromatic but evolves and becomes more colourful and detailed as more of the world is explored. For the music part, we will use Electronic heavy score, utilizing FM synthesis, ring modulation and electroacoustic elements, including textural constructions based off of real world locations. Audio system will be designed to mix SFX elements into the music tracks upon key character interactions.

Inspirations

• Plug & Play
• The Inner World
• Machinarium
• There Is No Game

These games have similar concept and gameplay with our game which describe meaningful and abstract stories with simple interactions by mouse clicking and keyboard (traditional point and click adventure). Exploration in the game will make players to think the hidden meaning of the scenes. Minigames are also involved in these games as a puzzle solving part to increase the complexity and variety of gameplay.