BLIND

BLIND, a Post-Ortus [birth]. In the fall quarter of 2007, I created and developed a game called BLIND with Alyssa Seidl, Blake Harris, Daniel Mehltretter, Michael Dickerson, and Nate Berna. Now, after completing and winning Brenda Brathwaite’s Applied Game Design class in Fall 2008, we are continuing development.

To recap, this is what our game is about.
The player controls Candace, a high school student who has recently lost her sight. The game begins as Candace wakes up on a hospital gurney in what she’ll discover is a secret government testing facility. Using her remaining senses, she must escape before the facility is obliterated by the military.
Gameplay takes place in the first person. Candace’s senses of touch, hearing, and smell are represented visually on the screen. Whenever a sound is made, Candace touches an object, or she smells something around her especially pungent, there is an accompanying visual cue. As a matter of course, this abstract “sense-vision” is accompanied by immersive sound design, which breaths life into the experience by surrounding the player in Candace’s sonic environment.

Last fall, with our team down to Alyssa, Blake, Daniel, Nate and I, we created a full design document, a handful of level designs, some concept art, and lastly a five minute-or-so trailer/proof of concept. All of that can be found here.

The idea all started back during my high school days. I envisioned the beginning of an action game featuring a blinded superhero, having to make it out of his nemesis’ lair, using his other senses. I offered up this abstract and brief concept in 2007 for a digital project in our Intro to Game Design class, also taught by Brenda. I described a survival horror game where a girl is blinded, and must use her remaining senses to survive her nightmare. At first I was wary about the team liking my idea, but after reviewing the ideas we all brought to class, we settled on working to flesh out what we called BLIND.
From then until the end of 2008, we worked and reworked the story, the setting, the characters and just about every system. At first we had a game that featured a lot of combat, a good amount of exploration, and some puzzle solving. We then gradually moved from that idea to one that featured only a small amount of combat, a lot of exploration, and some environment based puzzles. We talked about games we loved, like the Silent Hill series, Bioshock, and the Resident Evil series. We took them apart and found what we liked that they did, what we didn’t like, and what we wanted to, and could, augment into our game.
We decided early on that combat should be about tension and surprise, so the hordes of evil forces found in Resident Evil were immediately out the window. The creepy environments and ambience of Bioshock were in. The sound design and sense of atmosphere from Silent Hill were also in. We then added in heavy scripting for NPCs, a centralized threat, and a more concrete guide for the player in the form of a character named Simon.
Our goal in doing this was to create a more convincing living, breathing world which is at the same time accessible to the player, and a world which naturally leads the player through the levels.

The NPCs in our game are primarily patients and test subjects from the facility. They wander the corridors, interact with each other, and use left behind equipment to torment other NPCs, themselves, and the player.
The centralized threat came through inspiration from the Prince of Persia games. Nate came up with a main villain, one that would appear in full detail through Candace’s blindness, that would stalk and prey upon Candace and the other NPCs. This way, combat turned into flight, as the player must run and hide from this enemy when he presents himself to her. This also allows us to resign ourselves from giving Candace weapons. There’s just too much about a high schooler with no sight using firearms and blunt objects to fight through a facility that can’t ring true.
Simon, acting as an opposite personality to the enemy, has Candace’s survival on his mind. Like the enemy, Simon is able to appear to the player in full detail. Throughout play, Simon coaxes the player through the levels, gives advice about the area, and warns of danger. He also acts as a narrative catalyst, offering the player information about what is going on, as well as helping the player understand bits of the narrative in the environment.
Because Candace is blind, she is not able to read or see detail. This means that if and when she picks up a key or keycard, they are covered in brail or carved in such a way as they can be told apart. Computers also feature text-to-voice software so that if Candace is to access a computer, she can have the information read to her.

There are a lot of other little quirks that exist because of the player’s special circumstances, but this condition also offers some very unique visuals. Currently we are rewriting the design document, reworking our visual style, and preparing to send it off into the world.
Naturally, I’ll be writing to keep everyone up to speed on what’s happening with the game.