Year: 2023
Duration: 2 weeks
Team size: 4
Role: Gameplay & Sound Designer
Description: A short look into the life of someone with social anxiety.
The goal
We had to be able to tell a story by letting the player experience it themselves, so they would actively take part in the story, instead of looking at it from a distance.
The process
We started the assignment with the whole class by drawing anything that came to mind when given certain prompts like: “a game you played recently” Then we put all the drawings next to each other to find similarities. That’s how we got to our concept.
We wanted to illustrate the feeling of someone with imposter syndrome and the anxiety that came with it. The setting that we chose was a house party, where you have to find your friend in order to calm down. Like shown in the header image, everyone else around you don’t really have a face, and all seem to be looking at you. No matter where you go, everyone always stares at you.
In this project, I’ve mainly worked on the main mechanic and sound design.
Main mechanic
In this short experience, there’s one main mechanic that stands out, keeping control of your breathing. On the right-hand side of the screen, there is a breathing bar. You have to keep the indicator in the middle of the bar so as not to freak out. You do this by holding space to breathe in, and letting it go to breathe out.
If the indicator reaches either the top or bottom of the bar, the player character will start to have a panic attack. In this panic attack, the player will have limited time to press randomly spawning buttons on the screen before blacking out and having to start over again.
Sound design
Sound plays a big part in how we view certain situations, especially when stressed. When the player enters the house party, they’re immediately bombarded with loud techno music. In the background, the player can hear their own breathing as they are in- and exhaling.
When in a panic attack, much like in the real deal, everything becomes louder. The music is overlayed with heavy distortion, and you’re able to hear your own heartbeat. Only when the player is able to calm down will the music return to normal.
Final thoughts
I would really like to work more on projects like this, but bigger. I liked the fact that we were able to give the test players of our game the feelings and experiences that we had in mind. This was sort of like a steppingstone for anything I could make in the future. This project was short, with a subject I had great knowledge of. Now it’s time for a bigger challenge.
*There are still some polishing things I’d like to do before uploading the project to sites like itch.io*