It has been a tough couple of weeks but I am back in full swing of things. This time constructing the narrative behind the game. I spent a large amount of time staring at a blank document trying to craft an interesting narrative. This is actually in contrast to most of my other projects that I have worked on. A lot of my previous projects were “Story… um… well…” or simple plots that help give context to the gameplay. The only one that has a much deeper story is Fingeance but I don’t want to be the exception. So I tackled the story to my newest project. (Still working on a name, not the best with coming up with those)

Spinning a Narrative Web

You play as Sara, an explorer who is looking for her big break. She has spent the last few years researching and uncovering the truth about a lost city. She finally uncovered a major breakthrough in her research and plans to find it in person.

That is the basic back story of the game. As you play through the game you will start to uncover more about Sara, the city, and her motives for being there. Remember, this is going to be a short experience. So the secrets scattered across the game and the environments will hopefully sell you on the story of the game. There are going to be 3 main areas of the game: Inside of a cave, on a cliff, and in a jungle. I want to have these environments give you a sense of who has been there before which is something that I normally don’t tackle in my games. It is going to be a challenge because of this but I hope that I succeed in this regard.

Adding Character

On top of fleshing out the narrative, I also did a tiny bit of character design for the main character, Sara. She is a headstrong, determined, and skillful black woman who is on the search for the lost city. Although I spent a large time fleshing out her character, her motivations, and her idea’s but I didn’t get as much of an opportunity to work on the actual design of her.

The most that I got done was drawing up some hairstyles that she might have. Her hair is one of the things that I want to emphasize in her design. I want her to have a straps, ribbon or a looser jacket on. This is to help give more life to her movements as these will be reacting to her jumping, sliding, and running. So it is unfortunate that I didn’t get as much of a chance to work on her attire.

I am planning on using a 2D skeletal asset from the Unity Asset Store called: Anima2D. It has some pretty powerful tools that allows me to do bone animation within Unity. So far my experiments with it have been pretty successful so I hope to have some fluid and organic character animations. If you are a Unity developer and looking for a bone system to work inside of Unity I would suggest at least checking out Anima2D for inspiration.

So that is what I have been working on so far, I hope to dedicate WAY more time to this so I can really start to show some progress. To follow along in more of a real-time format, you can follow me on Twitter @DarkaysTG.