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Signal - Final Project - 18/09/18

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Signal - Final Project - 1/10/18

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Signal - Final Project - 17/10/18

Signal - Final Project - Sound  

Team Members: 

Aurora Agustin, Azimah Ali, Cristian Chelemen, Leif Ratahi and Victoria Joe.

Poster by Victoria Joe

Sound Effects and Soundtrack by Aurora and I. - https://drive.google.com/open?id=18YNwoWjb9NUEXZufilKkdnsoZhTzdjtC  

Summary: An interactive experience with a core mechanic that progresses the story. Our aim is to challenge the user, using the theme of ‘something is not what it seems’ to evoke an emotional response from them and help the user move on. The story follows the journey of the protagonist Axel and his relationship with the forest’s creature Griever.

Aurora and I used Ableton Live to compose the sound. I am not an experience sound designer. For the soundtrack, I used the same 2-3 tunes but used different instuments to see what vibe it gives and the kind of response it elicits. I made each comments on each of the samples I made. My favourite instruments were the 'lovely keys' - piano and 'off world strings' - violin. 'Lovely keys' and 'off world strings' are both soft instruments and has a satisfying vibe to it.

For inspiration, I sampled 5 and 6 after Craig Armstrong's 'The Incredible Hulk' soundtrack; 11 after the title track for 'Oblivion' by M83; and 17 after Alan Silvestri's 'Avengers Infinity War' soundtrack. I also found inspiration from 80s Sci-Fi movie background scores.

From the list of samples, Aurora and I chose 8, 9, 12, 16 and 19 to work from, since it suits the kind of music we want to compose for the story.

Sample Link: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=1NZrWA9_GAbZe0Brzmeo2R3m06pAXUD4e

Links:

Craig Armstrong - Incredible Hulk https://youtu.be/hv8PnYUBLQE

M83 - Oblivion https://youtu.be/822P87a773c

Aurora and I finalised the soundtrack for our interactive story.

Soundtrack:

Walking sound through the forest

Two versions of ending theme:

‘Staying’ ending (happier, upbeat vibe.

Letting go ending (sadder vibe)

Title sequence

Victoria was working on the art - concept art, poster, items and character art.

Leif was working on the animation and Cristian was working on the programming scripts.

We finalised all six objects: photographs, teddy bear, pendant, map, compass and hourglass. The first 3 objects represent the past – nostalgia, not letting go (DENIAL). The last 3 objects represent the future – what’s about to come, moving on (ACCEPTANCE). Each item has symbolism.

Photographs represent the protagonist’s past and the significant people in his past.                                                                                                        Internal monologue: “Photographs of a young boy accompanied by two parental figures. They look happy.”

A teddy bear signifies the protagonist’s childhood – a more innocent time that most people cherish and look back to.                                                   Internal monologue: “A soft looking teddy bear. It seems like it’s been well taken care of.”

A pendant is not only a piece of jewellery, but also carries sentimental value to a person.                                                                              Internal monologue: “An emerald green pendant.  Someone must’ve really treasured this.”  

A map represents the upcoming journey for the protagonist.                        Internal monologue: “Looks like a map of the forest. It would help me find my way forward.”

A compass gives the protagonist a sense of direction – moving forward    --> moving on.                                                                                          Internal monologue: “A functioning compass. It could point me in the right direction.”

An hourglass symbolises the passing of time.                                            Internal monologue: “A simple hourglass. Such an interesting way to measure time”

We finalised the story for our interactive story. Lighting the torches is still the core mechanic. The changes we made were that now there are two endings. A positive and a negative ending. This is determined by the items the user picks after lighting the torches. 

After a lot of discussion, we established our project name: After Dark and the project brief: To create an interactive experience with a core mechanic driving the narrative that explores the concept of “something is not what it seems”.

Aurora and I were simultaneously working on the sound and the story with the group. The tutor’s feedback was to cut text and cut Grover because we won’t have time to include both. We spent the most of the time thinking about the presentation of the game. We also finalised Griever’s colour.

For the third iteration of the story, I suggested that we start with a cut-scene image of the protagonist kneeling next to a dead Griever and then it fades out and then there’s a blank screen. 

The reason why I suggested the end at the beginning was so that the user was aware that Griever dies and the blank screen to incorporate denial and acceptance very early. If the user walks away, they are in denial and if the user stays, they accept his death and choose to carry on. Text was added to develop the protagonist’s character, drives the plot forward and answers the user’s questions concerning Griever’s death.  In this story, Grover is no longer the antagonist but warns the protagonist about the consequences of his actions. 

Aurora and I were working on the sound. We updated the sound effects and came up with a list for the soundtrack.

Soundtrack

1.                Silence - from the beginning when the environment is still dark.

2.                Forest music- when the first torch is lit

3.                Fade out back to silence? - when they reach the forest clearing

4.                Mystical (romantic?) music - when looking at the night sky

5.                Melancholic rain music? - when running back into the forest into the cave.

6.                Fade back to silence before Grover gets angry

7.                Thrilling chase music when they're getting chased

8.                Fade to silence after bridge breaks - silence until griever flickers

9.                Back to rain music? Maybe or sad music when griever dies

Updated list of sound effects needed:

•             Footsteps

•             Leaves rustling

•             Rain - dripping

•             Crickets

•             Birds

•             fire/torch

•             Lantern sound

•             Wind

•             Bridge breaking

•             Sound of flickering light

•             Griever sounds (+ death sound)

•             Grover sounds/roar

The main criticism we got for our interactive story was that we were complicating the process by not having a core mechanic. We needed a core mechanic to move the story along and strip other mechanics that didn’t contribute to the story and the theme. Therefore, we had to get rid of in-game challenges, think about our core mechanic and most importantly simplify the story. It was difficult discussing what our core mechanic should be. Eventually, we finalised the core mechanic which is lighting the torches. This is our core mechanic because the forest is dark and the torches are the light source. At this point we didn’t know how it would contribute to the end of the story - all we had was that they were using up all of Griever’s light. We also talked about pivoting the theme to acceptance – making the protagonist and user accept that Griever is dead and that they are responsible. I didn’t agree with this ending because I felt that guilt-tripping the user into accepting isn’t acceptance. However, the rest of the group liked the ending. 

Elevator Pitch:

“Through this project, we are exploring the concept of how “something may not be what it seems” We have developed an interactive story that portrays the juxtaposition of denial and acceptance through the player's actions. The theme is incorporated within the narrative and play mechanics. Our game follows a child's journey within a forest, accompanied by a forest spirit named griever. Our story follows them as their actions reinforce the idea behind denial and acceptance. Our creative process includes researching other games that follow similar themes, mechanics, and aesthetics. Right now, we’re in preproduction so we do not currently have physical prototypes to showcase though we would like to display our concept art of the characters and environments.”

Besides presenting an elevator pitch, we didn’t have much discussion about the story and how we could’ve improved it. We discussed a little bit about the colour palette and what colour Griever should be. His colour wasn’t finalised. There needed to be more discussion and options.

Using the version of the story we had written, we made our first iteration of the storyboard to visualise the events. 

The advice we were given from our tutors about our storyboard was to incorporate denial into the story without being obvious about it – more subtlety. Also, try to incorporate denial with the hood mechanic and how the story linked to the relationship between denial and acceptance.  

We also made a list of sound effects to enhance the aesthetic of the game. The list wasn’t finalised since this wasn’t our final story.

We didn’t know how to incorporate denial to our story, so we started brainstorming the concept of acceptance to see how we can link the story to denial and therefore make a link between denial and acceptance. 

We wanted the story to evoke the mood of denial and leave acceptance up to the user’s interpretation of the story. Therefore, we discarded the burning of the forest and changed it so that the end fades. The ending is vague; hence the user can acknowledge whether or not to accept the ending.  

We finalised the setting of the story – set at night and the sunrise at the end symbolises the start of a new day --> new beginning. Another possible ending to do desaturate the ending so that the magical forest becomes unmagical and the protagonist is isolated with ‘dead nature’. I preferred this ending since it was all in the protagonist’s head; figment of imagination and the protagonist as well as the user has to accept the reality.

Another character was also introduced – Grover. Grover is like Griever, but older and experienced, who chases the protagonist and Griever out of the forest. The way I interpreted the character Grover was that he was trying to protect his own kind – Griever – from the protagonist – outsider of the forest. This interpretation links to ‘something is not what it seems’, since Grover seems like the antagonist for chasing the protagonist but isn’t because he’s trying to prevent outsiders from entering his habitat.

We also made a second iteration of the story with slight changes from the first.

Protag awakens with a note saying “some things are not what they seem’.                                                                     

Finds griefer and protag is in denial whether to help griever or not.    

Finds apple and gives griever the apple to heal him.

Tutorial, Griefer teaches protag how to navigate the treacherous forest

First glimpse of Grover; protag approaches thinking he's friendly but he gets injured.

Climb tree to escape.

Bonding over the view of forest and apples.

Heavy rains come.

They go to a cave for shelter.

They see that Grover is approaching the cave and so they hide deeper in the cave.

Grover sleeps at the entrance of the cave and protag and griever have to sneak past him to escape.

Protag accidentally wakes up Grover by stepping on a twig.

Griever and protag run for their lives to escape the forest.

Grievers light fades and he becomes weaker the closer they get to the end of the forest.

Once protag reaches the end of the forest he looks down to see that he was carrying a rock the entire time. The forest is revealed to be his imagination the whole time.

Using the costume of the main protagonist we wanted to use his hood as a game mechanic to hide from his enemies. When the hoodie is on, he is hiding – off is not hiding. We came up with the first iteration of the narrative timeline.

- It starts with the protagonist waking up in a forest – no explanation (left up to the user’s interpretation). The forest is dark.

- The protagonist sees a flickering light – which is Griever. Griever is the light source of the forest. Apples heal Griever’s brightness.

- The tutorial stage focuses on the boding between the protagonist and AI Griever. This consists of Griever teaching the protagonist how to jump, double jump and play hide-and-seek.

- END: The forest burns down and the protagonist tries to save griever and himself by escaping the forest. Griever’s light flickers and dies, hence the protagonist killed Griever and has to accept it.

We discarded our bottle idea and the five stages of grief. After brainstorming, we decided to stick with only one stage which was denial. We agreed that we could incorporate acceptance, since it has a direct link with denial. 

As a group we agreed on making an interactive story, because unlike movies it is an active medium which conveys emotions through play and as a user you can control and play with the story. We finalised the characters and the art style. There are two characters: the protagonist and the AI ‘Griever’. 

We also looked into designs for the environment. In terms of aesthetics, I personally like the images with the purple forest because the purple contracts with the green and creates a perfect balance. Our next stage was to write the narrative and make a storyboard.

We chose to use the theme of grief since we believed that we could use the concept of ‘something is not what it seems’. However, we are somewhat utilising the idea of social isolation, since the environment of the game will be set in a forest, (island initially). Victoria came up with concept art of how the character will look like. The issue we have with the characterisation is that we couldn’t explain why and how the character is in a forest and their life before the forest. Charles suggested that we could use amnesia as a plot point for the character – denying their memories. However, our group agreed that the main character will just be an adolescent. 

The next stage was to brainstorm the idea of grief, in which we categorised it into the 5 stages of grief: denial, bargain, depression, anger and acceptance. Using the five stages of grief, we wanted to make a game with five levels where the user’s surroundings and mood would change depending on which level or ‘stage of grief’ the user was in. Initially, I used the metaphor of the bottle to explain the five stages of grief and use as a design mechanic for the game.