This blog will be the answer to Week 7 mid-semester blog post detailing the role, understanding of the project and its direction, and as the final reflection for the studio.

The narrative of the game goes like this: In the year 2030, the Raath (alien forces) invaded the Earth and war raged on between humanity and the Raath, and later humanity began to understand the battle was undefeatable. To prevent humanity from going totally annihilated, several members were selected to represent human race in order to negotiate a peace treaty between the two races. The Raath accepted and declared the cooperation between human race and the Raath would begin a new era of coexistence, but the real intention behind the signing of peace treaty was to have human as test subjects for the Raath to undergo genetic manipulation and experiment the power of mutated genes for the Raath to have more power to control over the Earth.

There are four main characters in this story: Isabella the tactician, Doctor Kuronoma, Gray the hacker and Adam the Spec ops. [Backstory] Isabella was captured in 2031 by the Raath for their experiments, the year when the agreement of peace treaty between two races had concluded. She was held in for 12 years and met Doctor Kuronoma, who was also captured in 2031 to be part of the Raath’s experiment team. He then started experimenting the usual procedures on her but she was the only one who withstood all the chemicals that were meant to wipe out the human race. Doctor Kuronoma escaped with Isabella but was captured in the end while he was letting Isabella escape.

Game flow: The game will start off with a video log by the Leader welcoming the players, the recruits then will walk into the hall room and introduce themselves and their departments. Each character (Tactician, Hacker and Spec ops) can only be performed by a player, thus, the players will have to decide which character to play upon.

1. Isabella: As the tactician, the player is meant to find out the time and schedule of the Raath’s plan and stop them from carrying it out.
2. Gray: As the hacker, the player will need to crack into the Raath’s system to decipher their passcodes and figure out the security passwords and codes to get into the base and prevent the Raath from doing anything.
3. Adam: As the spec ops, the player will be doing most of the physical acts to figure out the location of the Raath’s operation

Noted that there are three stages and this is currently in the first stage, which is a trial for the players before they can be part of the Raath Rebellion team. (Players will have no time limit at this stage. Questions are allowed and hints will be given to help to crack the puzzles.)

Once the players have selected their preferable character, they will be given with 1st stage puzzles. Completion of stage one will then come after with a congratulatory video log by the leader and stage two puzzles (not necessary to be completed as this stage is the final trial puzzle before accepting the players to be officially a Raath Rebellion member).  As the stage two puzzles go on, the leaders of the departments will then leave the room for a mission and Alex (supposedly a ghost character) gets called upon to leave too. Later then a video from the Raath gets played on the screen saying the HQ will soon be blown off. After the Raath’s video, the Leader appears back on screen to inform the players to contact Doctor Kuronoma. The tactician will be finding out what time will the explosives blow off and determine how much time do they have left, the hacker will crack into the system by figuring out the password and the spec ops will figure out the location of the bomb. Doctor Kuronoma acts as the key character as the players will guide him to disarm the bomb by using the walkie talkie that is placed somewhere in the corner of the room. There are two possible endings: if the players manage to solve the final puzzles in time, they can protect the HQ and win; if the players fail to solve the puzzles, they then fail to deactivate the bomb and they lose.

In terms of hints for the last puzzles,the spec ops will be using Raath language to figure out the location with the map they choose in the second stage puzzle (amount of Raath language hints won in first stage puzzle will determine the level of difficulty in the final puzzle). The hacker will be doing sudoku to figure out the password. As for the tactician, the player will receive a box containing Isabella and Doctor Kuronoma’s journals, a pencil, a mirror, and a map of the base, and the player is meant to figure out where the hints are hidden and figure out the time hidden within the box.

We did not use any digital and social media as one of our platforms, instead, we used video logs, audio logs, journal and physical objects like bullet gun to allow the game to be more effectively immersive. We added the idea of ‘agency’ into our game as the players are able to experience the actual feeling tension of time chasing with background sound effects when solving puzzles. I am very happy with my group’s performance as we started out with ideas all over the place, but we managed to merge them together and pulled them off well. Overall, I am glad that I have chosen Story Lab as my studio.

The picture below is the demonstration of the first stage puzzle of the tactician.

Solve the following puzzle and figure out the DATE of the latest experiment being conducted.

Second stage puzzle: Figure out the DATE of the placement of the bomb.

Questions and feedbacks are welcomed. Thank you 🙂