Type: Group
Project Length: 4 months
Skills:
Tools:
What was the goal?
This was a project I did in high school with another classmate. We were simply tasked with creating some kind of art final that represented our chosen topic. My topic was related to daydreaming, and since another classmate’s was as well, we were put together to create a piece of media as a team.
What was the output?
We decided to create a narrative based game about a girl with a one-sided crush on a boy, who would escape to her dreams to an imaginary version of him that loved her the same way. Over the course of the game, the player would have to make choices as to whether they want to escape their imagination and live life in the real world, or fall further and further into their mind.
There’s four different ending possibilities, based on the choices the player makes, with the best ending being friends with their crush and accepting reality as it is, and the worst being them trapped in their mind. The game also had branching paths in the dates the player could go on with their dream crush as well, with custom CGs for many scenes.
By the end of the semester, we had created a full narrative with two worlds for the player to explore, each with dates with the player’s dream crush which involved branching paths and choices, as well as real world sections with more choices that affect the ending. My main role with the game was turning our narrative structure into dialogue, as well as designing both characters and drawing their sprites, programming the game in Ren’Py, and adding sound effects. I also created a full soundtrack for the game for each of the different worlds and sections!
Takeaways
This was one of the first games I’ve properly made! It was my first time using Ren’py, and I learned a lot about using the software. I also learned a lot from making all the character art, as well as making the entire soundtrack! It was really fun to experiment with all the different forms of media that go into making a polished game, and I’m to this day still really happy with the final result!
