Narrative • Game Design • Scrum Master
DWARF UNDECIDED
Dwarf Undecided is a game where you are taking care of your mothers weapon shop for a few days. The game is a shop-keeping simulator that tests your knowledge of the weapons in your stock and their use.
Customers only describe what monster they will hunt. It’s up to you to figure out what to give them. You have a book that contains information about weapons and monsters. At the end of the day you get to read some newspaper articles which contain stories of how well the customers did on their hunts.
The results are based on how well suited the weapons are for hunting. The result has an effect on how much money you get from your customers. If they do well they add a tip, but if they do poorly they will issue a fee.
The goal of the game is to earn money, which can be used to buy weapons to restock the store, or licenses which allows you to buy new weapons for the store.
• Genre Simulation Game
• Platform PC
• Engine Unreal Engine
• Production Time 7 Weeks
• Team Size 9
• Role Narrative • Game Design • Scrum Master
SYNOPSIS
You are taking care of your mother's weapon shop, and currently the great hunt festival is in full swing. Giving you an increase in customers. Try to utilize these days as much as possible to grow the shop as much as you can and make your mother proud of you.
SETTING
In a small town at the edge of Dwarven society a festival is being held “The great hunt festival”, where dwarfs from all corners of the world travel to acquire the most powerful weapons, so they may hunt dangerous monsters. Nothing is more important to a dwarf than their pride as a monster hunter.
FLOWCHART
The loop for the entire game and the steps you need to take in order to understand your work as the merchant. A game loop runs continuously during our gameplay.
The core loop is the most engaging and active element of our design and we wanted to give something spectacular for our simulator game that makes it fun and interesting by giving the player a fun experience by letting you decide the weapons and be able to make it personal your shop.
SCRUM MASTER
Coaching members of the team to give everyone the best support they need for the product and find techniques for effective management.
- Daily Standup meetings.
- Sprint planning with the team.
- Reminding the team to take breaks.
- Organizing the MIRO platform.
- Supporting everyone in the team.
- Helping Product Owner to communicate with everyone in the team with info regarding planning and deadlines.
CONTRIBUTON
GAME / NARRATIVE
- Worked closely with the story and building the world.
- Making sure that the player understood what to do during gameplay.
- Core emotional elements including character/dialogue, structure, and setting.
CHARACTERS
- Worked with Celtx when creating the lines.
- Making sure that we randomized the customers with many lines to make it feel fresh the whole time.
- Exploring interesting ways to make it fun when talking to the customer.
- Voice over when you talk to customers.
UX
- Communicating User Experience decisions in a story driven game.
- Texts for the interaction in the gameplay.
- Deliver a smooth, enjoyable player experience and maintain the right amount of challenges for the player to keep the game fun, engaging and entertaining.
- Mapping the flow of interaction.
- Deciding on what, when and how the player receives information at any given time.
- Making sure that the music and sound fits with the environment and using sound to help the player to understand the context.
SOUND
- Exploring what sound should fit for the environment.
- Making sure that everything had sound when you as a player were interacting with the environment.
- Created sound effects and soundtrack for the game.
STORY
The story is about a merchant who is taking care of his mother’s weapon shop. The village is celebrating a very special week, which is ‘’The great hunt festival’’. A time when all the dwarfs in the village start hunting creatures as a tradition.
We took inspiration from different games but the story itself is something that we wanted to have that would fit the simulator game. It is a very basic story but the backstory is important to understand your mission as a merchant in the shop. After reading your tasklist, you understand that the festival starts and your mother wants you to be there for the customers.
SCRIPT
I had the opportunity to work with the dialogs for the customers. Since we had South Park as an inspiration for the characters, I wanted to research some good dialogs for the NPC.
I took inspiration from the Zelda games because when you interact with them, you hear the voice-over and see the dialog when they talk to you. In those games, you can see the wacky feeling and how they bring goofiness to the dialogs.
I used it as an inspiration and later on worked with some line ideas I had on Celtx (scriptwriting software) and presented it to the team. We did a lot of drafts until we got something that felt good.
Dialogs
Our theme was to have a goofy wacky environment and we wanted to make sure that the story around it felt the same way. Our characters are very goofy.
Our customers react differently depending what weapon you give to them. They can get happy, angry or confused. I had to make sure that we had angry, happy, and confused answers after the customer received a weapon.
Here are examples of some lines when you talk to the customers. This is when you are greeting them. Dialogs made on Celtx.
THE CUSTOMER
You will be presented by a customer who is looking for a weapon for the hunt. By reading in the Journal you can get information to make sure you sell the right weapon.
It's important to give the customer the right weapon. The more correct choices, will in turn generate better scores and money for the shop. In the game, you will also receive news about how the hunting is going for the customers.
We had a blueprint that would trigger when you gave a customer a weapon. In those we wrote down all the wishes they had and randomized it in order to make the customers feel refreshed when you talk to them. We had over 30 different lines when they greets you and the answers they give you after they receive the weapon. It would trigger depending on the weapon you give and if it’s ‘’true’’ depending on the wishes.
ANGRY
By giving them something they did not ask for makes them disappointed and angry. You will get a bad reputation on the news and less money.
HAPPY
By giving them the right weapon will give you a good reputation and more money for the shop. You will also get happy customers for doing a good job.
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CONFUSED
Perhaps it was not really what they thought of but it does not necessarily mean it was a bad thing. It could be both good or bad depending what weapon you give the customer for the hunt.
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DESIGN PILLARS
COZY FEELING The mood was important and we wanted to make sure that the weapon shop felt very warm and light-hearted. The music added a better experience to the game as well.
INTERACT WITH ENVIRONMENT We wanted to have an environment where you have the ability to move around the weapons and make your weapon shop unique and personal.
GOOFY CHARACTERS Our goal was to have customers that were very goofy and had the wacky feeling when you interact with them. The interaction is what makes it interesting when you need to decide what weapon you need to give to the customer.
Tasklist
The first thing we wanted to present is the task list where you can read what you need to do before opening the shop. The task list gives you the first connection with mom.
Interacting
The interaction with the items was important to have a UI highlight / Hover animation where you can read what weapon it is and letting the player know that you are able to interact with the weapon and have the ability to change its placement in the shop.
Control Settings
By showing what buttons you can use helps the experience easier to understand what you can do and how to do it.
For example, here you find the control settings at the corners and on the Journal if you want to turn the page. We wanted the players to have a world UI in the book so that they would feel more connected to the game environment. And to also create a bigger bond to the character.
SOUND | MUSIC
I worked closely to find the right sounds when interacting around the environment, and helped the player to understand what to do during game play. The music gave the right feeling of what we wanted to achieve which was a cozy and warm atmosphere. Also, giving the customers different voice personalities made it funnier to interact with them and they felt more alive.