Emilie Zhang's Portfolio
Chapter 2: Voices in My Head
Wellesley Playable Media Lab, Prof. Jordan Tynes
A 3D third-person mystery; game included in Wellesley Annual Video Game Showcase.
Team
Wellesley Playable Media Lab; Prof. Jordan Tynes
Emilie Zhang, Wellesley College
Valen Foo, Wellesley College
Game designer, programmer for custom scripts, narrative designer, UI designer
Chapter 2: Voices in My Head is a 3D third-person mystery revolving around the truth that happened 400 years ago. As an adventurer, you've chanced upon an old abandoned apothecary. It seems that you've stumbled upon a witch's curse and a funny old man who tells you the key to solving this mystery was to make the correct potion--and jog his memory.
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My Role:
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Game designer, creating custom assets, custom animations, cutscenes, NPCs, dialogue systems, lighting and custom scripts in Unity
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Programmer, collaborating to create original scripts in C++ for game mechanics such as the cauldron mixing system, the instant teleportation of objects when you reset the cauldron, and item pick-up & put down
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Narrative designer, brainstormed with partner to create an entire narrative arc, world lore, and characters. This game is one chapter of that vision.
Role
3 weeks, 2023
Unity
C#
Timeline
Tools
Overview
In-game screenshot of the apothecary
Partnering with Valen Foo, we created the second chapter of our vision with the Wellesley Playable Media Lab. Our vision for the larger game begins when you, an adventurer, stumble through the forest and find an abandoned town that has been lost to time. You are surprised to find that everything is still intact, though dilapidated, and that a huge temple stands erect at the end of civilization. Intrigued, you enter the towering temple to find an invaluable crown at the center. Succumbing to greed, you go to take it but when you touch the crown, you are sucked into a powerful curse placed over the entire town and its inhabitants hundreds of years ago. You find a variety of enchanted items, and these objects had instrumental roles in the conflict that happened, and have trapped the ghosts of townspeople in its puzzle space. Breaking all (three) enchantments can lead you to break the curse put on this town and leave this place before it’s too late.
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This game, Voices in My Head, represents one of the three enchantments we envisioned, and takes place in an apothecary. This mystery revolves around the "antidote" given to the townspeople hundreds of years ago. The challenge? Find the correct recipe, recreate it in the apothecary, and test it on the flower to see its true effects.
Custom Assets
In-game screenshot of dialogue interaction with an NPC
example of code
Apart from the usual software development and design being done in Unity, my partner and I created many custom assets for this project. More specifically, we created numerous custom scripts with 6000+ lines of code to create game mechanics specific to our game.
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Some of these include:
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ingredients are "teleported" back to their original place when the player empties the cauldron and tries again (we transport the same object instead of spawning more)
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NPCs have dialogue outside of a cut scene that the player can cycle through. They also have idle dialogue that give hints after every new unlocked step
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things specific to proceeding in the level have a white outline effect. This includes the two recipes, when you must talk to the NPC, and ingredients
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every ingredient can be picked up and put down numerous times at their station
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Later, I went one step further and created custom UI to create a cohesive experience for our game.
Top left: custom made title page of the game.
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Bottom left: in-game screenshot of the custom-made pause page
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To the right: two custom buttons that were included in the pause UI
I was also responsible for crafting all dialogue for both NPCs, including the crowd-favorite "they're gonna take voices out of my brain!" that eventually became our chapter title.
Playthrough
The following playthrough was downloaded and played on an M1 Macbook Air using Parallel Windows and x360e to simulate a Windows Desktop with an XBox controller. On a better device and using a controller, the movements of the character and environment load much better.