Roles: Narrative Designer, Game Designer, Producer, Sound Designer.
The Lifelike demo/proof-of-concept was created as a one-semester senior capstone project at Northeastern University. It went on to win the Best Overall and Best Art Direction awards at Northeastern's Game Demo Day 2014.
Lifelike is a turn-based, tile-based, team-based, hyphenated-classifications-based tactical RPG in which the player takes control of an intern climbing her way to the top of an increasingly other-worldly office building. Our design focused on creating a unique, fast-paced demo inspired by our favorite aspects of tactical RPGs and roguelikes, while also providing an unintrusive and integrated narrative experience.
A bitter intern, in hopes of clinching a once-in-a-lifetime networking opportunity, climbs her way through the increasingly confusing and otherworldly Ethereal Eclectics corporate office building—home of the world's premiere trans-dimensional outsourcing agency. She's got a meeting with the CEO, but will she be able to make it to his top-floor office in time? ...or alive? (still from the Live Action trailer I directed—see it in full below)
Here is a selection of gameplay footage from the final Lifelike demo
We also made a dev blog along the way if you'd like to see a little insight into our team’s development process.
In a shining example of Brand Synergy™ and Intellectual Property Development™™, I also directed a live-action trailer for the game as the final project of a film class I was also taking at the time.
My Contribution (extended):
The game spawned from an idea of mine comparing the descent through dungeon floors in hopes of treasure with the ascent through office building floors in hopes of a career advancement. From that point, I served primarily as the director, producer, and narrative designer for the project.
We knew early on that we wouldn’t be able to fully realize our vision in the mere four months we had to work on the project. Passionate about the idea, however, we decided that we would make a vertical slice/proof-of-concept for the idea rather than lower our ambitions in order to attempt to create a “complete” experience in that time.
Lifelike showing at NEU's Game Demo Day 2014, where it won the Best Overall and Best Art Direction prizes!
As producer, I was in charge of all planning, documentation, and management. I wrote our design documents and milestones, organized & led meetings, organized playtests, and assigned tasks to project members. I maintained our Trello boards to keep track of individual task progress (with only a few months, we went with an agile development style). I also created, maintained, and edited the posts on our dev blog.
In my role as Narrative Designer, I wrote all the dialogue and lore documents, led the world and story design, and designed all of the characters. Apart from that, it was my job to lead not only the development of the game's narrative (story, world, characters), but to ensure that the game design served and complimented that narrative rather than simply standing beside it. I worked closely with Paul Murray, our Lead Game Designer, to design systems and content that were just as important to the narrative as the dialogue or art direction.
I designed the incidental dialogue system for our characters & wrote lines for all characters. A particular focus was on character progression through minor dialogue/combat barks that had trigger conditions based on the extent of the “corruption” in the office.
An early decision we made was that the slow progression of “corruption” from a realistic office building into a surreal, occult landscape was a core element of our narrative that should shine through every aspect of the game. Though we weren’t able to fully implement dynamic corruption as we originally intended, we maintained the core idea. I designed and wrote descriptions of every day office items with versions for several levels of corruption, which I then handed off to our artist.
For an example, take one of our characters, Sam. Every playable character in Lifelike was in part created by a "Title" that served as a foundation for both the narrative and gameplay design of the character. Sam’s title is “The Temp”—as a dejected, unmotivated contract worker, his stats are pretty low. However, as part of his contract (that he absolutely did not read before signing), his employment comes with possession by PAL (Productive Apparition Leadership). PAL is his signature ability, which temporarily possesses Sam with a spirit that leadership would describe as “a real go-getter”. This enthusiastic ghost of team-building activities past takes over Sam’s body, granting him increased stats and basic attack range while also turning all of his dialogue into generic motivational poster one-liners.
Or take Niko—"The Blogger"—a wannabe internet reporter accidentally integrated with a laptop (also the star of the live action trailer). Niko's active ability is called "Reblog". When used, Reblog can take an imprint of a nearby character's active ability and allow Niko to use that ability himself for one turn. As the descriptive text for the ability states, "It's not plagiarism, it's sharing!" Niko is very insecure about his identity.
The mechanics of the characters’ active abilities serve the narrative as much as they serve the gameplay by reflecting and reinforcing their personality and character design. This is but one of the many cases of active narrative design in Lifelike, but I believe it serves as a helpful example of my role as a narrative designer.