The Mariverse
The Mariverse
The Mariverse
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Jay Miles
Narrative Designer - Game Developer
Igor Meme
Imagine this, an ugly, hideous, terrifying, evil-looking monster that will give anyone nightmares… working at an American gas station.
That is the life of Igor Meme, a regular guy with a deformed mutation, struggling through his work life until he has a chance to work at the counter on Halloween Night, can Igor take up such a responsibility or struggle through the stressful work of dealing with annoying customers and those who judge his appearance?
Igor Meme is a 2D, story-focused, Visual Novel that features choice branching, 3 mini-games that simulate working at a gas station, Data collecting that determines an ending and a stress system which affects the choices available for the player.
The game was created for the 7th Annual Spooktober Visual Novel Jam. The game took 30 days to develop and was created by a team that included 2 Artists, 1 music and sound designer, and 9 Voice Actors.
My Involvement
Due to the extended time of the jam and no certain themes, other than 1) the game has to be a Visual novel and 2) has to be Halloween themed. This was a great opportunity to execute a concept I had in my head towards the worldbuilding for the World of See Only Evil. The idea of a monster having a regular 9-to-5 job.
So I took it upon myself to become the Lead Narrative Designer and Unity Programmer for the project. Prior to the start of the Jam, I did team searching. I posted a thread on both the Devtalk Discord server and the Jam's forums that I am creating a team and made an open audition to find voices for the characters in Casting Call Club. I managed to find someone to fill each role that I need; the only role I didn't manage to get was a UI Artist. When the jam started, I decided to fill in that role myself.
Planning and Writing
Before I started creating the game, I first had to plan for what the game will have, what mini-games I need to include and how will the story would unfold.
I created a 'Player' Path Graph' to figure out who will appear, what they will do during the encounter, what choices the player can have and what will it ultiamtely lead to until the next encounter, I also made it so that each encounter is a 'checkpoint' all paths ultimately lead to a linear path. it helps sort out and isolate each encounter.
(Note: this is an early draft of the graph, it includes choices and other elements that were scrapped due to pacing and/or narrative flow.)
(Note: The following document is the Regular Customer Document, a 5th draft that includes a review from the Proofreader.)
Once I figured out the path, the next step was the dialogue. With the total of 10 scenes (an intro, 8 encounters and an ending) I created a Word document for each scene, keeping track of choices, making sure the conversation remains consistent to its path. After fully writing the dialogue, I had to go through the dialogue, make edits, I even had one of the artists, who volunteered to proofread some of the documents. In addition, I had to explain to the proofreader the worldbuilding of See Only Evil to guide him on certain aspects of how the game world works. he even gave comments in which I either agreed with or gave an explanation if I belive a line can stay.
This process of writing and editing took nearly 15 days to complete (I did other stuff, such as programming and giving tasks to my team, during the time in between). but once I have all the dialogue written and satisfied the final edits. I proceed to write voice scripts for the voice actors. I am very aware that once I send the voice lines, I cannot edit the document again, hence the immense amount of editing.
I used Trelby to make a more professional voice script format. I took each character, looked at all the documents and wrote down each line that the character will say in the game. There were a total of 9 characters, and it took me roughly 1-2 days to complete all the characters before sending the scripts to the voice actors.
(Note: The following Script is for Igor Meme, a character who has the longest amount of lines. A total of 305 unique voice lines.)
Mini-Games
Along with planning the dialogue, I also wanted the visual novel to have more interactions, so I thought of mini-games, quickly thinking about how people working at a counter would work. Ended up with 3 Mini games based on scanning and paying.
1. Gas Recipt
The first one needed to be incredibly simple and not too complex. so I thought of a way for the customer to pay for the gas. by giving you a recipt and you have to press a button on the 'Gas machine' to scan for the price, it might be unrealistic but it's for the sake of interactvity of the game.
The game is simple; the receipt number randomly generates a number from 1-4, and the player has to press the right button to be successful.
Unlike the other mini-games, the Gas receipt mini-game is played on a canvas and not in the world space. This is due to the use of buttons.
(Early Layout design of the Gas recipt Mini Game.)
2. Product Scanning
The next Mini-game, I wanted so that you can still see the customer while doing the game, having interactable products appear on the side, and it's up to you to scan the products on the scanner. learned to use 'click and drag' with this game, and added a few more features, such as the cost of the products when scanned, highlighting the products and rotating the products.
However, there were more that I could have done, such as using gravity, having the desk floor collide with the product, but it was a lot harder to program, so I ended up doing a 'let go and it reverts back to where it was' deal for the sake of keeping it easy and not too complicated.
(All the Scannable interactable products, I also made the asset art)
3. Cash Payment
Out of the 3 Mini games, Cash Payment is the most complicated, as it requires the use of maths and a lot of triggers and Game Objects to make this work.
Cash Payment connects with the previous 2 mini-games, as it adds whatever number selected in Gas Receipt, all the products scanned in Product Scanning and an 8% Sale tax added from the total price to make up for the final price (since the game takes place in the US.)
(Early Layout Design for Cash Payment)
Cash Payment is the only mini-game that has phases.
Phase 1 - Payment:
Putting the cash in the box, and making sure the cash is in the right box. putting a coin in the wrong box will cause payment error.
Phase 2 - Change:
Taking the cash out and putting it out, but making sure the change is the right amount, going over would cause a payment error.
there are also other features, such as the customer not wanting change, thus skipping phase 2, and a completley different payment, using card scanning.
(Cash Assets.)
(Fun fact: In Phase 2, when taking the cash out, it uses the same game object of the coin/note, when let go, the object turns off, waiting to be recalled again.)
Data Collecting & Endings
Igor Meme has a total of 3 endings. a Good Ending, a Middle Ending and a Bad Ending.
How the player get either one of the endings is through a point collecting system.
How I made the system is by using a game object that never gets destroyed and goes through scene to scene, checking the actions of the player. If the player does something that would count as a point, such as making a payment error or making a negative choice. Then it would count towards the total count which determines an ending. Low points would equal a good or middle ending, high points would equal a bad ending.
(Ben Kiteman in his dark office at the end of the game.)
Conclusion
Overall, after creating the game, I felt pleased with the result, happy that I managed to get the game done
while slightly overscoping.
What did not get in are:
1) - Passtime:
intermission between encounters to explore the store,
interact with objects and play mini games.
2) - images for endings:
CGs of Igor in each ending
3) - Bonus Easter egg:
a Non-canon secret encounter where Minda from Rebecca Origin's. Her appearance would
have been after the Minda Webcomic.
These never happend due to the deadline coming close, but I believe cutting out Passtime made the game better, as including it would have made it boring due to a lack of interactions and more player involvement
in pointless mini-games
I would've also improved more of the Stress system that I added. While it did its job of having negative choices appear when stress is high, I thought of other ideas, such as a game over at 100% and stress affecting mini games, but again, I had to consider time and do what I can for the system. but still happy with what came out.
