TALE OF TALES

game demo project

INTERACTIVITY PLAN
game structure, floorplan (instructions)

8 will be structured very much like a conventional 3D computer game. We want to present people with an environment that they immediately feel familiar with. We will, however, do thorough testing and research to make playing the game as smooth and intuitive as possible. (Many games that we have played in the course of our preliminary research fail in this respect: we could not get past the first scene in almost half of them!)
The game will be highly non-linear. Drawing flowcharts of the interaction would not make much sense. But there are a few interaction and navigation concepts that we can talk about.

Navigation
There will be two ways for the player to move the main character through the world: a character-centric one and a player-centric one. The first is the convential first-person game navigation with the cursor keys: up moves the character forward, down backward and left and right turn the character. The player-centric approach is very common in console games. (It is sometimes refered to as 2D-control since it maps the X&Y positions of the input device to X&Z positions in the game world.) In this system the character goes to the left of the screen when the player presses left, and it goes deeper into the scene when he or she presses up, etcetera. This is a very convenient navigation system in games that do not position the camera behind the character. The cursor keys are not adequate for this system because they only allow for movement parallel or perpendicular to the camera. An analog gamepad is much more suitable. But since we are making a PC game, we cannot count on all players having one. So we have developed an system that uses the mouse (the only analog input device attached to a standard PC) for navigation through the space. Since this is an unconventional system, player testing will be extremely important and we will also provide the more conventional character-centric navigation system mentioned above for less adventurous players.

The actions of the main character will be determined by both the player's input and the game's AI. The latter will be a combination of a hint system (detecting whether the player needs help and making the main character perform an action that can help him or her) and properties set by tracking the player's behaviour. The latter is in fact an education system. The main character will more or less imitate the player's behaviour. When the player picks up and drops objects a lot, she will be more inclined to do that, rather than running to another room for instance.
Opening doors and walking into the next room, will not be animated. Rather doors will function as links between scenes. When the character is positioned close enough to a door the screen will fade out, a sound of a door opening and closing may be heard, and the screen will fade in to show the new room.
The motions of the girl will be determined by other environment elements as well: she will walk around large obstacles, push light ones, climb over low ones, etcetera. She will do this spontaneously without intervention of the player other than telling her to move in a certain direction. This independent behaviour will give the Girl more character which will make her seem more real to player. The aim is to increase empathy.

Interaction
As the little girl discovers the eight missing Automaton Objects that are hidden in the palace, she will receive abilities that will enhance her interaction with the game environment (telepathy, cleaning, repairing, watering, pruning, fire lighting & healing). We call these abilities spells because they are somewhat magical and because of analogy with traditional games. Spells will be the most powerful way for the player to be creative with the environment and change its appearance. They can also be of help for solving certain puzzles but they are never required. The spells are there for fun. They form a game withing the game.

There will be many objects in the game world that the girl can pick up and use where appropriate. Contrary to most games, the girl will only be able to carry one object at the time, thus avoiding the classic game backpack that can contain everything including the kitchen sink. When the girl is walking around with one object and she picks up another one, she will need to drop the first. Some puzzles might require the use of such an object. On such occasions, the player will have to find that object and let the little girl bring it back to the place where it is required. Picking up an object will be done with one key of the keyboard or button of the mouse, using it with another. Since at any time there is only one object in the character's hands, a 'select object' interface is not required.
There will be a 'Show object' key or button that the player can press to make the girl show him the object that she has on her (some objects will be small). When this happens, the camera will zoom in.
This picking and dropping of objects will also be used for Save Game and Load Game functionality. There is a polaroid type photocamera in the game. When the player finds it, he or she can take it to a place where she want to save and take a photograph. The photograph will fall on the floor. When the player picks up this photograph and "uses" it, the saved game will be loaded. This photograph will show a picture of the scene the girl took a photo of. After a while, depending on the player's behaviour, the game world may be littered with these photographs. It will be possible to delete them by taking the photograph and burning it or throwing it in a garbage can of some kind.
As with all the objects, we hope the player will be creatively collecting them and making systems of his or her own to arrange things. This collecting and arranging could be considered another game within the game.

Display
The game will be perceived through independent cameras. They will be static or they will pan but they will not simply follow the main character. The idea is to create a kind of cinematic atmosphere that stresses the narrative rather than the main character (or even the player). The default camera will be a still camera that shows a good shot of the room we are in. The player will, however, have, albeit limited, access to the motion of the camera: he or she will be able to look around the room, maybe move in it and/or zoom into things. All of this unrelated to the main character. This is for convenience of gameplay but also for psychological reasons: it is one of the things that will help to make clear to the player that he or she is not the girl but rather someone who helps her, a parent or guardian.

All stories within the game, illustrating elements of the different versions of the fairy tale but also inventions of our own, will be told by means of animations. Either they will be shown as traditional cut scenes that appear as dreams. Or they will be performed by characters in the game, who will wake up from their sleep temporarily, or start sleepwalking, to perform the action, and go to immobile sleep again afterwards.

Immersion
The initial aim of the interaction design of this game was to immerse the player in the game world as much as possible. The game world is a place to which the player wants to return often. Not necessarily to play, but just to be, to hang out, relax, enjoy, etc. A kind of poor man's holodeck (Star Trek). (We have fantasies of future versions in which the game environment would be linked with real world elements, giving the player a room in the palace where he or she can make phone calls to real people, email, write texts, order food, keep diaries, store souvenirs, etcetera, maybe even invite friends.)
In order to do this we want to avoid graphic interfaces as much as possible. The screen of our game will be completely free of buttons and text. In most cases, interaction will be a logical result of the objects in the near vicinity of the character.
As we have been developing the game further we have been putting more and more focus on the gameplay on the one hand and the narrative elements on the other, rather than focussing exclusively on immersion. We believe that the game should be fun to play and that it will contain narrative elements that may provoke deep artistic pleasure and/or contemplation on the part of the user.
To extend the life of our game, there will be a bonus game that the player can play after he or she has completely finished the main game. This game will consist of playing Hide & Seek with the main characters. This would also lend itself very well for a multiplayer game. (Implementation will obviously depend on available resources at the time of production.)