- [email protected]
- Stockholm, SWEDEN
| Engine: | Unreal |
| Team Size: | 14 ppl |
| Production Time: | 4 weeks |
| Released: | 27 Feb, 2020 |
| My Role: | Designer |
| I worked mostly on narrative design and QA. I also did some event scripting. |
Bahari is a deep sea explorative puzzle experience, where you use your underwater camera to document hidden artifacts. Each artefact, when unlocked, uncovers a missing piece of a puzzle.
As a player, you have limited amount of oxygen. When low on oxygen, your field of vision starts to diminish. However, there are air bubble spots scattered across the ocean floor, where you can replenish your oxygen tank.
This was the 2nd game project at Futuregames, and took 4 weeks to produce. The criteria was to choose one limitation for each discipline. For game design, we chose to go with limited visibility.
The team consisted of:
The Setup
Catalyst
Character in action
Inciting incident
Background story.
A certain cause, leading up to what’s currently going on.
Protagonist chooses to act in a way.
Now clear what the player needs to do.
The Setup:
A huge part of the planet has become submerged under water, due to climate change. As an archeologist you’ve made it your job and passion to dive deep into the ocean, in hopes of finding valuable historical artefacts and clues about lost knowledge.
Catalyst:
A change in Earth’s ocean eco system has made the nutritional situation critical for what’s left of humankind. You’ve identified a large concentration of underwater life signs and activity to a particular location. Perhaps the answer to mankind’s survival could be found here..!
Character in action:
The protagonist travels with his boat to the mysterious location, double checks the navigation chart, gears up, and dives into the ocean.
Inciting incident:
As the protagonist suspected, there is an abundance of underwater life and resources in this location. He must now use his camera to document anything unusual which could be of interest, and then safely bring the pictures back home for further study.
I scripted a triggered event for rocks to start falling down as soon as the player reaches the tunnel exit, in order to grab the player’s attention and hint in which direction to move first.
Rockslide Trigger Event
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Falling Rocks Simulate Physics
I added some additional functionality to the “bubble blowing pipes”. Besides granting providing oxygen to the player, they also shoot out three bubbles projectiles in random order:
The “bubble launchers” were places in a way so that some of them would shoot out “light bubbles” that would reaveal secret pathways for observant players.
During hands-on playtesting sessions, I watched the external testers play. The main purpose of these sessions was to collect data from observations and feedbacks about the emotional experience while playing the game.
As they played, I asked them questions, such as:
After finishing the game session, I would ask:
