The team's vision has always been that Veiled Reality's story would be presented as a series of discrete episodes, each allowing the Player to explore a different feature of The Veil. Qainaat, the Player and The Veil all interact through. dialogue tree, where Qainaat describes a feature of the Veil, her thinking behind it and encourages the Player to try it.
For the R&D phase, we've focussed on developing the first episode – BONDING – with some exploration of a prologue, plot outline and some opening dialogue, supported by dramaturgy sessions on backstory and dialogue improvisation.
Our thoughts were heavility influence and inspired by interactive stories such as Firewatch, Adr1ft, Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, Dear Esther, Gone Home, and Portal.
The Player tames and bonds with The Veil as it adapts to its wearer symbiotically.
The player experiences the received wisdom and thoughts from previous wearers of The Veil who have witnessed veiled realities.
Large scale code-switching conflicts cause glitches for the Player as they hears a cacophony of overlapping voices and learn to tune in and hear.
A time-limited modesty mode which if used too frequently renders the wearer permanently invisible.
Toying with the duality of transparency and privacy.
The Veil “glitches” as the dark photon processors at its heart cause dark energies and mythical djinn to infiltrate the Players experience.