Chopsticks: Narrative & Levels

As lead narrative and being a level designer, I began to ideate what scenarios the player character might find themselves in, considering how the narrative could facilitate the design of the tasks that the player will have to complete.

Before coming up with levels or narrative, I made sure to note the following, as they impact what scenarios we can include in the game:

We have 12 working weeks to develop the game, the scope needs to be appropriate for that time limit.
We are aiming to make a game with an ESRB T-for-teen rating, or PEGI 15. There should not be blood, gore, heavy language, sexual content or excessive violence.

Narrative and Levels

Due to the events that will transpire directly correlating with what the tasks and levels are, I will be noting them together.

Environments and Tasks In-Game

Due to time constraints, I am going to attempt to design the narrative and levels with the goal to have a small amount of different environments for scenes to take place in, and re-use environments where possible and plausible. Currently, the environments planned are:

Bathroom (Used for brushing teeth)
Dual-Carriageway (Used for driving to work, then again for driving whilst in a gunfighting car-chase)
An office room (Used for receiving a task from the player-character's boss, then again for signing your name at the end of the game)
A warehouse (Used for a standing gunfight)
A void space with only a small light focused on a table of food (Used for the tutorial to teach player's the controls)

Tutorial

The tutorial will be some traditional Chinese foods laid out in front of the player-character (PC)
An invisible figure with the voice of an older woman –implied to be the PC's mother– tells them how to hold their chopsticks and use them to eat food.
Once the player has brought all the food towards the camera (ie. the PC's mouth) to eat it, they will have completed the tutorial
The tutorial will end with the words "now remember, always use your chopsticks!" and then fade into darkness and load the next scene.

Level 1 - Waking Up

(Cutscene) The PC wakes up and gets out of bed to go to the bathroom.
(Gameplay Begins) The player has to brush the PC's teeth. This endeavour involves the following (with potentially varying order):
- Picking up the toothbrush
- Taking the lid of the toothpaste off
- Squeezing the toothpaste onto the toothbrush
- Brushing the teeth by bringing the brush up to the screen and making a side to side motion a few times to succeed in the task.
- The fail states are - dropping the toothbrush or toothpaste onto the floor, or using all of the toothpaste without getting enough on the toothbrush

The area around the sink of the bathroom will need to include a combination of objects to work as both helpers and hinderances. When I performed this task in real life, I needed to elevate the toothpaste and rest it on a higher surface than the toothbrush.

Level 2 - Going To Work

(Cutscene) Edward gets ready for work. It does multiple fading cuts in the following order
- Buttoning his shirt
- Putting his belt on
- Tightening his tie
- Picking up a briefcase
- Walking to the car
(Gameplay Begins) A narrator states “And then, he drove to the office”. Speed is automatically controlled, but the player must control the steering wheel.
- The player has to change lanes to avoid going into the back of cars in front
- At times they must make bare-right and left turns because there's bends in the road at times.
- They will also have to make it into tight spaces in the road because of a lane being occasionally closed.
- They must go onto and drive on a roundabout towards the end, taking the 3rd exit (out of 4).
- For the very end, they must park in their parking space at work to succeed in the task. They do not need to park well.
- The fail states are - accidents that prevent the car driving anymore, or a total amount of damage to the car being sustained.