Water You Waiting For (WIP)
Water You Waiting For (WIP)
Team: 6 People Tools: Unity, Miro, Jira Role: Systems Designer, Narrative Designer, Writer Timeline: 6 Months
Overview: Transformational City Management Game (Game Still In Development)
Embedded Files
Work In Progress of Gameplay
Game Description
Game Description
Focused on informing players of the water crisis and teaching how they can help through sending letters to their local government
Played from the perspective of a mayor who was just elected into this small town that's falling apart
Members of the community will reach out to the player in the form of letters requesting change within the city
The player must decide how they want to allocate their resources around the city and which changes will be best for the community
You have 36 months (rounds) to fix the town or else you'll be forced to step down as mayor.
Design Goals
Design Goals
Create an enjoyable gameplay experience imbued with the transformational messages
Promote change and further research into conservation work
Quick to learn and play for a highschool audience
Game Loop
First 18 months of the timeline planned out
My Current Roles
My Current Roles
In charge of the development of the Bills, Events, and Letters
Design
Design
Created the initial systems for the Letters, Bills, and Events and how they work into the main gameplay
Oversaw and helped create the modifiers, buffs, and debuffs that you get from each of these features
Designed and heavily balanced the timeline for when each Letter, Bill, and Event would occur within the 36 rounds
Narrative
Narrative
Wrote the letters to the mayor to invoke the transformation
Wrote small dialogue interactions for the overworld to amplify the transformations from the letter
Wrote dialogue barks for the Bills and Events
Takeaways (so far)
Takeaways (so far)
It's hard to get players interested in informational writing. When writing the letters I've had to focus on the transformation, humanization, tying it into the rest of the game, and non-repetitiveness. There are 11 unique letters in the game and I've learned that they don't have to be at 100% in each of these areas all the time. There will be some letters more transformational and others that are more human and compelling, but what's most important is that players actually read them because otherwise it's all for nothing.
Writer's block is hard to deal with, but I have learned to get past it through a lot of heavy research. I didn't know what it takes to maintain a city as a mayor and that was impacting my ability to come up with anything to write about. A lot of research into the municipal government and water related issues within cities gave me many ideas that I could use as a foundation when writing as everyday people complaining to their local government.
When creating a large system it's best to take it in small chunks. When designing the timeline for the entire game I took it round by round and tried to envision the position the player would be in at that point. I followed a teach, test, challenge methodology and slowly built it out until everything was set in place. Throughout further development the timeline has changed and been balanced more, and it gives a great visualization to the player experience and progression.
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