NIGHT SKY
NIGHT SKY
3D First Person Walking Simulator, RPG
NA
Solo · NA · 2024
Narrative Designer
Ideation
“Night Sky” seeks to encourage self-reflection on whether we have lost our capacity for love. Players take on the role of an art critic who has lost their ability to appreciate beauty but gradually regains it after attending their mother’s funeral. Through reassembling furniture imbued with precious memories and returning it to the family home—where years of conflict once overshadowed any warmth—they ultimately rediscover the long-buried affection they shared with her.
Narratively speaking, this game reflects my personal relationship with my parents. As grateful as I am for their support, past traumas have diminished my love for them, and by developing this game, I hope to explore ways to address this subconscious hostility.
Mechanically, the game aims to seamlessly and intuitively align the player’s motivations and emotions with those of the player character, creating a cohesive blend of story and personal reflection.
General Scale
Strange --> Relatable; Grey --> Colorful
Inability
Drawing inspiration from Depression Quest (Patrick Lindsey 2013), this game aims to simulate the inability to appreciate love through narrative choices, the uncovering of scenes, and the game environment's color palette. Initially, the environment is dominated by grey tones, which also affect the player’s dialogue choices, metaphorically covering them with an “oil paint” layer. As the player character rediscovers warm memories with their mother, this oil paint weakens, unlocking more vibrant visuals and dialogue options.
Conversely, the "less empathetic" the player is, the more the environment remains grey and the fewer interactions or narrative beats are available, eventually making the game relatively boring. Players must actively engage to make the game environment more colorful and the story more compelling. This mirrors the player character’s own struggle to take initiative in doing what they know they should do/say. Further narrative and mechanical details need to be explored and skills developed to ensure these transitions feel smooth.
Aligning Player and Player Character
The narrative is designed so that both the player and the player character grapple with a question of “what should be done” versus what they truly empathize with. Players might sense they should feel sorrow or loss over the mother’s death, but because they have minimal context, this empathy may feel forced or odd. This parallels the player character’s perspective, as neither do they feel love for their mother. Likewise, both the player and the player character may recognize the more “appropriate" choices or dialogue options, but find themselves barred by an internal inability to act on them.
Further consideration is required to refine these ideas and mechanics.