Unity 2021.3.1f1
Lead Designer, Narrative Designer
30 person team, 16 months
Lead Designer, Narrative Designer
30 person team, 16 months
This was such a fantastic title to work on. It spoke to my youth playing games like Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo Kazooie (which were both references for the feel and style). The game not only looks beautiful, but is also fun to play! Basil controls so smoothly and has interesting traversal mechanics that make just running around in the game extremely enjoyable. During a playtest at a local mall, one of the moms asked us "Is this the new Nintendo game?" and that lifted my heart like nothing else.
And we got Runner Up in Unity's own Best Student Game Awards AND Press Play Gaming's Best Student Game! Such an honor to even be nominated among other amazing projects.
And we got Runner Up in Unity's own Best Student Game Awards AND Press Play Gaming's Best Student Game! Such an honor to even be nominated among other amazing projects.
Narrative
Writing for this game was so much fun. The characters all have such distinct and varied personalities, and figuring out how they would interact with each other was an absolute joy. Which isn't to say that it wasn't challenging as well. We overcame some pretty serious issues and I'm very proud of what we created. In addition to rewriting the entire narrative when I joined the team to be more resonant with the game's overall vision, the Anise character required some heavy tinkering to get right.
Relevant to her story, there is an important choice presented to the player in the Mystic Mangroves about whether or not to rescue Anise from a booby trap she unwittingly set off while attempting to go against Sage's choice that Basil be the village's new Shaman. In our initial playtests, we found that only a very small margin of players was choosing to rescue her from her predicament. After noticing this trend, we began polling players in various ways about why they made this choice and the answers basically boiled down to "I just don't like her."
To reach this conclusion, we performed a number of tests both before and after players tried the game for the first time. We printed out snippets of texts and character headshots with various expressions and had players match them together. In practically every case, players were putting together Anise's default expression with absolutely bonkers text that we wouldn't dream of putting in the game. What this showed us was that Anise's facial expressions and body language were giving players a very wrong idea about who she was and players were creating misconceptions about her before she ever had a single line.
Our initial goal for Anise was to create a rival character to Basil that would push the player's buttons in the way a sibling would. These two characters grew up together and there was a tacit understanding between them that Anise was the one who would eventually become Shaman (as she is Sage's granddaughter). When Anise learns that it will in fact be Basil who will become Shaman, she is shocked and outraged. However, in our early attempts at writing Anise, we leaned a little too far into the 'outraged' category and players were offended on Basil's behalf.
We worked with the art team to soften her look and animations in addition to making her written lines a less standoffish and it made a very positive impact on the number of players who decided to help her out of her predicament.
Relevant to her story, there is an important choice presented to the player in the Mystic Mangroves about whether or not to rescue Anise from a booby trap she unwittingly set off while attempting to go against Sage's choice that Basil be the village's new Shaman. In our initial playtests, we found that only a very small margin of players was choosing to rescue her from her predicament. After noticing this trend, we began polling players in various ways about why they made this choice and the answers basically boiled down to "I just don't like her."
To reach this conclusion, we performed a number of tests both before and after players tried the game for the first time. We printed out snippets of texts and character headshots with various expressions and had players match them together. In practically every case, players were putting together Anise's default expression with absolutely bonkers text that we wouldn't dream of putting in the game. What this showed us was that Anise's facial expressions and body language were giving players a very wrong idea about who she was and players were creating misconceptions about her before she ever had a single line.
Our initial goal for Anise was to create a rival character to Basil that would push the player's buttons in the way a sibling would. These two characters grew up together and there was a tacit understanding between them that Anise was the one who would eventually become Shaman (as she is Sage's granddaughter). When Anise learns that it will in fact be Basil who will become Shaman, she is shocked and outraged. However, in our early attempts at writing Anise, we leaned a little too far into the 'outraged' category and players were offended on Basil's behalf.
We worked with the art team to soften her look and animations in addition to making her written lines a less standoffish and it made a very positive impact on the number of players who decided to help her out of her predicament.
