S.A.P.T
-Pitch:
Short point-and-click detective adventure set on a sci-fi space station. A murder has been committed and now it is up to Sarah Hoppkins to find who is behind it. This might be more than what Sarah asked for.
-My Role on S.A.P.T:
World, Narrative, Level, & Dialog Design.
-Project Details:
Platform: PC
Engine: Unity
Language: C#
Development time: 3 weeks
Team Size: 4 Designers.
-World Design:
A corrupt futuristic dystopia is almost a 101 for a detective who doesn't play by the rules. This setting is perfect for a short-term project because not everything has to be logical, making it easy to overlook small mistakes. Everything is busy, loud, and colorful.
-Narrative Design:
For us to not waste too much valuable time during a short project, along with another designer, we wrote a few concise summaries of story ideas in a bulletin point style. Afterward, the entire group voted on and chose the most appealing one to expand on.
It was crucial to tell the story through the eyes of the main playable character while at the same time explaining everything that the player would need to know to make decisions.
I wrote a short narrative of how we would like the player to navigate the menus and the game world.
-Level Design:
I focused on the level layout where the player visits the victim's home. The level had an interactive NPC, zones for clues, and was split into two sections because the instance had two floors.
I also finalized the remaining levels. For them, all had the same cohesive theme. I added small details to bring all the levels to life, such as driving cars, lights, and moving objects.
-Dialogue Design:
During this project, I wrote dialogue options in Miro, where I could branch out from nodes with different options. I color-coded various dialog options to indicate that some of these options were locked behind specific dialogue lines. This turned into a spider web very quickly. Even though it was massive, we could track the branching options as they were added to the game without difficulty. I used the same system for branching when the player interacted with an item.
The main focus was to have the conversations and options feel natural and informative without all of it becoming a wall of text. That was much easier said than done.