INTRODUCTION
Role: Solo Developer
Skills: Art, Programming, Narrative Design & Writing
Tools: Unity, Yarn Spinner, Procreate
SUMMARY
I won 1st place in the 2022 Resilience Game Design Contest with this narrative-driven game that helps young people explore healthy coping skills. The game has been published on itch.io by Jennifer Ann’s Group and comes with a free lesson plan for educators to use with their students.
CONCEPT
I entered the contest by submitting a written pitch for a game that would help young people explore the topics of resilience and healthy coping skills.
I pitched a narrative game that involved the player replying to text messages around different stressful situations at school, at work, and with friends. I tried to emphasize choice in the game – rather than forcing the player to use healthy coping skills, the game lets you do whatever you want but makes the consequences clear and provides future opportunities to make different choices.
I was selected as a finalist based on my written pitch, and had 6 weeks to develop the game and create a trailer.
DEVELOPMENT
I created the game in Unity and used the Yarn Spinner dialogue system to manage all the text in the game.
My process for developing the game involved:
If I’d had more time to work on the game, I would have focused on increasing the choices available to players and giving more options for them to ‘turn things around’ after failing to use a healthy coping skill when the option was first presented.