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Wolf & Raven
Narrative Platform Game
Summary
Creating a narrative platformer RPG desktop game to teach a younger audience about the symbiotic relationships in Yellowstone National Parks in a fun interactive format.
Audience
Elementary and Secondary age range
My Role
Project Lead, Level Design, and Programmer (Dialogue)
Team
Alex McDonough, Leah Balsan, Sara Lung, Jasmine Tsin
Timeline
5 weeks in Summer of 2023
Tools
Unity Engine, Pixel Crushers Dialogue System,
Adobe Illustrator, Figma
The Problem
Students are often taught about the various types of symbiotic relationships in class or through textbooks, which still hold value, but an interactive experience can make learning material more approachable and inspire playful learning. There is also a lack of autonomy when learning in class via lecture and this can diminish engagement between the material and student.
With this issue in mind, my team created, Wolf and Raven, a desktop narrative game that interweaves the playfulness and engaging factors of RPG platformers to teach the audience of the various symbiotic relationships between organisms found in Yellowstone Park.
Design Goals
01
Create an interactive narrative game to inspire learning more about symbiotic relationships.
02
Focus on eye-catching, minimalist design to capture the attention of the audience and create characters to communicate the narrative
03
Assess if the interactive design reads well and is usable.
Design Process
Ideation and Research
We tackled ideation by first breaking down what learning goals we wanted to achieve along with what we would enjoy designing. As a group, we settled on symbiotic relationships in Yellowstone Park and a narrative-style game to achieve the goals of creating intriguing characters that users could interact with and learn from.
We created ideation boards to pinpoint what design styles would both look aesthetically pleasing and functional for the developing stages. We narrowed down what style of gameplay we wanted our game to be.
We also brainstormed what story we wanted to tell, what characters would be involved, and how the players would interact with the game.
Workflow
As a team, we broke down what areas we would spearhead along with breaking down the stages of production. Since we were a small team of four, we also assisted in various areas of production as needed. We also routinely meet up for team meetings every week and as needed, and stayed in contact with each other via Discord.
As the project lead, I created timelines and action points to keep the production on track along with recording meeting minutes for team review.
Asset Design
The characters and background were created with a minimalist, paper cut-out style in mind. The paper cut-out assets were designed to evoke a storybook setting, lean into the narrative gameplay, and evoke playfulness in the player.
Assets were created in Adobe Illustrator and transferred to Unity 2022.3.
UX/UI Design
UX/UI design focused primarily on how the dialogue text boxes would appear on the screen and how the quest system would appear and play. UI assets were designed similarly to the character assets and background to make the game style feel cohesive and still evoke that storybook motif.
Wireframes were created in Figma to plan out the UX flow of the dialogue boxes. UI assets were also created in Figma and then brought into Unity 2022.3. The UI assets was given functionality using the Unity dialogue editor extension,
Pixel Crusher.
Level Design
When creating the level design, it was important to make sure the design worked with the narrative and balanced both difficulty and playability to keep the user challenged but not frustrated. Iterations of the level design occurred after being play-tested by the team and peers.
The level design was sketched out in Photoshop and then was brought into Unity to be blocked out.
Development
The team developed a sample level of Wolf and Raven in
Unity 2022.3. The player character and companion character were given functionality along with animation. We also applied the dialogue system to the game along with quest functionality. The dialog trees and code were documented for future reference.
The project was then built out and posted on itch.io for playtesting.
Conclusion
Next Steps
This involves gathering feedback and suggestions from playtesters to guide future game improvements. Playtesters will be recruited through personal connections, Reddit forums, and Discord channels dedicated to playtesting.
The game showcases one sample level. For future iterations of this game, adding a couple of levels to scale the game and create a more cohesive story would be the next step to create a more expansive game.
Want to Play?
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