Getting up is hard

Getting up is hard

This small prototype is a point-and-click game, but instead of directly interacting with the world, the player draws the attention of the protagonist to objects which triggers thoughts of the protagonist. In an inner dialog the player discusses with the protagonist what to do. The aim of this game mechanic is to better transport emotions, thought patterns and world view of the protagonist. The prototype is an abstract implementation that can be used to create own games, named the conscious game engine - using the accompanied content tool (read more in technical background section), see Github page and itch.io-page.

Playing the game

The goal of the prototype game is simple: Get up and leave your save apartment. Use the arrow keys to move around and use the left mouse key to click objects to trigger thoughts or click thoughts you want to get in to.

Technical background

This prototype is implemented using the MonoGame C# Framework. It is accompanied by a tool for creating content, hence it can also be viewed as a prototype of a point-and-click thought-driven game engine. Using the content tool, one can create own games with the thought-interaction mechanic. You can learn more about the conscious game engine here.

Experience while developing and future planning

The initial motivation was to get experience in game development with a more rudimentary framework, so I have to do most of the functionality myself and not just use a game engine. This leads to much more workload to create a simple idea. But on the other hand, I learned a lot, such as building simple light manipulation, implementing a path finding algorithm, implementing a simple sequence system, dialog system, state system and thought-interaction system.

There are still some bugs in the prototype and it is very rudimentary. I plan to improve it further, when I have more time left and try to at least create a small more coherent game by combining the mechanics with proper writing of thoughts and dialogs. With some more tweaking it should be possible to create content and different framing of the mechanics rapidly by using the content tool.