Last Breath Of A New Empire
First game prototype and further iteration for my CART 315 class.
Game features
- Interactive narrative
- Mild resource management
- Sci fi political interest
Journal
Design hypothesis
- RTS-style strategy game set in space
- Heavy focus on dialogue
- Stellaris-like interface, but with less tension and more whimsicality
- Procedurally-generated planets and narratives (this may not be feasible within the timeframe)
- Story focuses on the player as a shopkeeper, watching the collapse of an inter-galactic empire through sales and conversations
- Map slowly goes dark over the course of the game
- Some resource-management and special events here and there
Development
Entry 1
- Started to plan out some of the basic structure of the design hypothesis
- Had to scale back a bit, and focus on a smaller story
- Still a bit worried that I may be beyond what I can do in a week, but we'll see
Entry 2
- Added a script to generate the random night’s sky pattern
- Learned how to use the bloom post-processing effect
- Started work on creating simple UI for the game
Entry 3
- Started work on creating gameplay
- Added visiting starships and a home location
- Worked some more on the UI
Entry 4
- Created a base for a dialogue system
- Created a template dialogue text file
Entry 5
- Made dialogue more susceptible to branching narratives
- Added profile pictures to the characters
Entry 6
- Added title and end screen
- Added 3 dialogue files (much more will be needed in a final version)
- Lots of small tweaks
Entry 7
- Added some new UI
- Added star orbiting
- Lots of visual quality of life changes
Entry 8
- Updated the UI again
- Added the prologue and name selection scenes
- Lots of behind the scenes stuff
Entry 9
- Added sound effects
- Added star animations to correspond to sound effects
Entry 10
- Added wiki for the game
- Added a bunch of new NPC dialogues
Entry 11
- Lots of dialogue system tweaks and re-implementations
- Started adding new questlines
Entry 12
- Finished new questlines
- Optimized conversations switching
- Added final summary scene
Entry 13
- Did build optimization
- Small fixes everywhere
Questions for playtesters - Round 1
- The game is meant to slowly feed the narrative to the player through these small dialogue interactions. From the limited amount that you’ve seen, do you think that a full-fledged narrative could be accomplished this way?
- Would this fare better as a 3D game with an actual shop environment? Or is the minimal UI a style of its own?
- Should the narrative stakes be lowered? In other words, is the story’s scope and worldbuilding too vast?
Results from playtesting - Round 1
Main issues
- Visuals were a bit diorienting for playtesters who had mostly used 3D
- Lack of clue as to what the context was hindered players at the start
- The bug which failed to take the player to the end screen was a prominent issue
- There was a non-zero amount of comments requesting a tutorial
Main enjoyments
- The feasibility of the game was echoed by most, if not all playtesters
- Playtesters felt that the UI didn't need any 3D additions
- They also felt that the scope wasn't too vast, and they were able to grasp the narrative relatively quickly
Improvements to be made
- Though playtesters enjoyed the visuals, I would want to encorporate more 3D into the UI and some events
- To resolve some of the initial worldbuilding confusion of the players, I would want to maybe have a prologue or tutorial of sorts
- From the live playtest, I really noticed that I needed to scale the takes up a bit more. The resources depleted for too slowly
Questions for playtesters - Round 2
- Is the objective of the game clearly demonstrated?
- The narrative is more fully-fledged now. Do you think that the world is immersive enough? Or do I need to add more?
- Did the new sound effects work well? Are the randomly-ringing bell chimes too distracting?
- Do there need to be more consequences? I feel that it still may be too narrative-heavy.
- Were there any bugs with the UI? I was having an issue or two.
- Unrelated: Would you like to write a dialogue interaction? I’ll put it in the game if you send me one.
Results from playtesting - Round 2
Main issues
- Choices aren't impactful upon gameplay
- No proper "endings"
- No narrative resolution for the Raggedy protesters interaction
- Resources can't be used to any effect
- Could be more hints to specific important happenings in the world
- Sound effects to be a bit more meaningful and more muffled
Main enjoyments
- Sound effects are soothing
- Objective is clear
Improvements to be made
- Add a recurring character?
- Add a robber character?
- More sound effects
- Add a dialogue with an option to adopt a pet?