*Disclaimer: Possibly turn your volume down before playing in your browser.

How to play:

WASD - Movement controls

Mouse - look around.

E - interact.

This game was made for my Expressive Game Design module for my final year at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Summary

Alone is a game based of my experiences and feelings during my University life. Throughout University I had felt not good enough to be where I am, I have struggled with the feeling of depression, Anxiety, Imposter Syndrome, Stress and as the end of my final year at university draws ever so closely,  Acceptance. 

Unlike traditional video games, where there is an eventual goal at the end, this is more of a "Walking Simulator" You will walk along Islands each with their own visual representation. The first Island is depression, the second is Anxiety/Imposter Syndrome, the third is Stress and finally Acceptance.

Development

It took me a while to decide on what the theme of this project would be. I had previously been impressed by other walking simulators I had seen. Being a person who struggles with talking about my issues I sometimes find it easier to visually represent them, this is where the whole idea came from. I put great effort and focus into getting each islands feeling right. I made great use of Audio and the Unity Universal Render Pipelines post-processing to get a unique feel on each island and to emphasize how each emotion felt to me, and potentially for many other people.

This game wasn't actually a part of my original prototyping, and mostly came at a whim whilst in the shower. I felt to be expressive was to accurately show how I have felt throughout university, this is something I've never really made known to others around me.

Each model seen in the game I made myself. I find it extremely relaxing and challenging at the same time to sit down and try and build everyday objects in modelling software.

Rather than make the player guess what the island represents, to make it more clear, even though I feel each islands theme makes it clear enough. There is a title screen as you load into the island, I like the more cinematic feel this brings to the experience and felt without it, the transition felt far too bland.

Further Development

If i were to develop this game further I would work more on making more post processing effects along with having timed events whilst the player is walking around the islands. I would also like to do more animating on some of the models, potentially have the "People" models actually move around and do things.  I would also have liked to add more islands as I had to cut down on the amount of levels in order to complete the game within the time-frame I had left myself.

Another island which would've been quite enjoyable to make if I had given myself more time would be a procrastination island, this could be really interesting, I could use "Triggers" to have things activate which should distract the player from getting to the Door which would take them to the next scene. Other ideas could be that the Door originally looks much closer but as you go towards it you notice the path to the door is actually further away and it isn't just simply walking towards it that would work, great use of sound would be to have certain voices notice something in the background telling the player to go have a look at something rather than actually progress towards the next scene.

Finally what would have been a nice feature to add, had I had the time to add it, I would've put in some dialogue which would come from the characters which are placed in the scenes. This dialogue could've been to express their feeling or explain who and what they are.