WIND
Faced with a strong wind,
Rupert finds himself caught in something deeper.
Inspired by Robert Löbel's short film - Wind.
Dev Team
Version 1.0.0.1
Producer - Christopher Lee
Game Mechanic & Level Designer - Mark Sim
Sound and Narrative Director - Valerie Ye Min
Producer
In charge of all aspects of the game. This includes asset creation, blueprinting, overseeing of level design and art direction.
Game Mechanic & Level Designer
In charge of creating game mechanics through blueprinting, assisting with level design and bug fixing.
Sound & Narrative Director
In charge of ambient sounds and ensuring a positive narrative experience that is portrayed through the game
Narrative *spoiler alert*
Inspired by Robert Löbel's short film, we wanted to give this game a twist to the story while revolving around the concept of Wind. As such, we started off with the narrative aspect of the game.
As the character gets out of the cave, he is greeted with gusts of wind that are not overpowering. The character then gets introduced to these "red-shirt" humanoids who are cutting trees. Along the way, the lifestyles of these humanoids are presented to the character through the chasing of the laundry and the playing of badminton with the wind.
Soon, the character finds a shed that contains several oil barrels and a hatch. He opens the hatch and finds himself trapped in a enclosed tunnel. Soon, he enters a door that leads to a processing plant in which these humanoids are dumping toxic
waste into the environment.
Game mechanics are introduced in this stage in which the player has to get past the moving platforms and rotors to get access to the main underground door and complete the puzzles to take the elevator up to the surface.
Reaching the surface, the character finds himself climbing over the fence of the paper factory. He pulls a lever which reverses the direction of the conveyor, at the same time switching the
tree-to-paper machine on. The humanoids were arguing because of the spoilt machine at first but they cheered as the character turned it on. The piles of paper are then sent to the next room in which they are being fed into the furnace to be burnt.
Managing to escape death, the character now faces an ever worsening pollution and he crosses a polluted lake filled with the corpses of these humanoid and makes his way into the sewage pipe. Over here, pieces of narratives such as the posters are placed to subtly hint to the player that people were generally unhappy with the wind. One of the posters even said to take charge by eliminating the "character". In addition, holes in the sewage pipes showed glimpses of the wind turbines that were producing this strong wind.
Soon the character climbs up a ladder and ends up into a room with turbine generators. As he progresses to the end, he enters a room with a logo that brightens up and validates the character as the boss to the factory. The portrait on the wall also depicted that fact. Music plays and he is greeted by a control panel with flashing lights. He ultimately presses the button which destroys the factory and the game ends with his workers, which are the humanoids cheering for his good deed.
Process
Assets
Since we decided to build all the models and environment from scratch, we went ahead with a low-poly style as this will save us time on both texturing and optimization of the game. Both Maya and Blender were used for 3D models.
Mechanics
Camera Spline
We wanted a visually engaging experience hence we decided to use a camera spline to follow the player. This allowed us to show or hide environment which provided a better experience for the player.
Platform Puzzle
Combining the narrative aspect of the pollution plant, we felt that we could incorporate puzzles into the game as this will serve as a challenge for the player when fulfilling their objectives. Death is part of a learning process for players as they will learn from their experience and overcome the puzzle, making it more fulfilling.
Lever System
After creating platform puzzles, we would require a toggle that is easily understandable and visible to the player. Hence we decided to go with this lever system that changes between red light and green light whenever the player interacts with it.
Sound
Valerie headed the sound development and ensured that the sound effects are all in sync with the player's interaction and ensured an engaging and compelling storytelling. A list of sound files can be found in this link.
Checkpoint System
Respawning played a big part of our game mechanics and it helped the player learn from their mistakes. We made sure that the player is rewarded for their efforts and reduced any
loss of motivation.
Problems faced
Lack of Mechanics
Since we started off with the aesthetics, we created assets and the different settings that we put them in as sort of a testing playground. Eventually, we built quite a fair bit of level and we stuck with that. However, there was not any form of mechanics or player interaction other then just moving forward. Through feedback, we realised that many people got bored of just simply pressing the left key and it became more of a exploration game rather than an interactive game. Hence we implemented the underground puzzles which turn the tables over and made it fun.
Bug Fixes
There are still some or many bugs to be fixed. This is the list of bugs present.
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Rolling tree obstacles do not respawn when the player dies.
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Laundry obstacle's collision is not accurate and might result in lack of movement when the player steps on it.
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Hatch still brings the player out of the screen when interacted.
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The camera does not fully pan out for the underground puzzle scene.
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Abrupt change in post-processing volume from the sewer to main factory.
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Boss room door takes a long time to open after the end credits.
Expansion Plans
We might be planning a sequel to this game. To be continued...