Story
Steve is on his first day as a CleanSpace employee. All excited, he takes on the assignment (with big help from the ship’s computer Gart.T.H) to clean the surrounding space. What he doesn’t know is that an evil narcissistic Game Designer is luring them straight into a trap. Steve feels that his first day on the job turns into a surrealistic nightmare, while the evil game designer has a different view on the matter; it’s just a fun game…
Developing time:
2 months
Engine:
Unity
Average playing time;
10- 15 min
Game design, art, animation, sound and programming;
Kalle Carmback
Voice of Steve;
Johan Hallström
Beautiful music;
Tvärvägen
AMBITION
As a newly graduated game designer I felt that I missed a good portfolio piece to display my ambition, storytelling and creativity. I also wanted to show off my technical knowledge. Create proof that I have some experience in programming, animation, 3D-modeling and sound design.
So I got this crazy idea. I wanted to make a space adventure that contained fun gameplay and simultaneously simply was a boring CV.
It took me two months. Doing everything but voice acting and music. My aim wasn’t to make the perfect game. I wanted to find my own limits, I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to be better in Blender and write code more fluidly. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it even though my initial idea was quite heavy. And I did manage to complete the game fairly close to the vision.
CHALLENGES
A lot of challenges appeared during the project period. I fixed most of them and left some of them unsolved. Although I now know how to fix the bad models and I had solutions ready for some of the game designer related issues that’s still in there I didn’t have time. There’s just so much you can do for no money.
ONBOARDING
I realized that I needed to get the player onboard fast, this being a ten minute game. Making the controls appear in your helmet hud and Gar.T.H prompting the player to try them out did break the fourth wall (which I dislike) but I found it to be the best solution. It felt helpful to add the story to it; that Steve is kind of a lazy bum on his first job in big need of help. I tried to be more vague with the vaporizer instructions and using visual guidance with the loading bar and so on – letting the player learn by doing. Still I didn’t want players to stop playing because of not understanding the controls for managing to solve the pyramid puzzle before getting my CV chugged up their faces. That would have ruined the great joke. For that reason I might have been a bit to guiding here then I usually am.
NAVIGATION
At first moving around in space was a hustle. I locked the head tilt and added a dot in the hair cross that gave you a hint if you were looking up or down. That helped a lot. I later used that dot to show players if they were in range of tractoring something by making the dot red.
GETTING PLAYERS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE STORY
My mission here was to showcase my storytelling skills and dialogue writing. At first, experienced test players speedrunned the game causing a lot of dialogue being interrupted and the story being cut in half. I added the vaporizer load function to slow down the pace without making the player feel that they were waiting for a dialog to end.
TELL MY STORY
I wanted to fill the game with me; my ambition, my storytelling, my quirkiness, my life. Starting by placing the Legend of Zelda in there – The golden cassette that made me love games as a kid – the reason I am doing this now. If you know me, you’ll find me everywhere in this game.
The result
Curriculum Vitae will never be a best seller nor win prizes. Then again, that was never intended. I’m not trying to be a game artist, animator nor a programmer. I wanted to prove for myself, and for you, that I have fun goofy ideas, that I can solve problems, that I understand game logic and can create new mechanics, that I can write engaging dialog and create a decent graybox prototype. In that aspect this game is a total success. I feel so much stronger as a game designer now, than when I started this project.
gameplay video (spoiler)
Spela videoklipp
CONTACT
I love to meet up and talk film, music videos, children’s culture, games or life in general. You’ll find me at any of the coffeshops around Södermalm, Stockholm or on discord or any other social media platform. If you’re hiring and looking for competens and want to read my CV – click on the link and download the one that seams to fit your purpose.
