Spektacles

In regards to the name of this game - it is pronounced "speck-TAH-cleas" or maybe easier:

Spectacles but pronounced like Hercules.

link to download: https://spektaculargames.itch.io/spektacles

I started this project for my 2D Capstone class in August, and it is by far the largest game I've created. Being able to go through the development process from start to finish across three to four months was incredibly enlightening. I learned so much about my work flow, how to make a team work together cohesively, how to properly do a lot of things.

I worked as one of the programmers on the team and as the narrative designer. I helped build systems for the gameplay - most notably the enemy called the "Sirens." They were created to pull the player in towards them and create a sort of "standing trap" for the players to avoid. The other enemies were patrolling (Jocks/Jorcs), searching (Pixies), or stationary (Sirens, Vampires). This was to keep things varied and to allow our level design team to use them in different combinations across the game.

However, my largest and most noticeable role was in Narrative Design. While I worked with code to create the narrative and still worked on other programming tasks, the majority of my time was spent writing and implementing the 5k+ word narrative, complete with 5 different endings. The story and endings went through multiple iterations, and plot lines got shuffled around more than we would've liked, but we were able to create a wonderful story nonetheless. I had written previously, but mostly for recreation and never for an interactive piece. Luckily I have a lot of experience playing visual novels and narrative driven games, so I had a baseline of what do to.

I chose to use the tool Fungus for a variety of reasons - namely that it has a visual programming element so that if I was unable to continue work on the project at any point anyone on the team could pick up where I left off with minimal knowledge of programming. Fungus is a tool made specifically for creating visual novels in Unity, and while it is very powerful, we had quite a few issues trying to adapt it to our game. I created custom functions for the tool to use in order to get over this issue. One of which was disabling the player's ability to move during certain cutscenes, and to toggle the blur the player sees after using their petrification ability.

Toggling the camera blur after player petrifies something

Toggling the player's ability to petrify and the player itself

These small blocks of code allowed Fungus to work within the confines of our game - they were used to give an overall polished feel to our game and so that cutscenes could work narratively. Sometimes we used Unity's built-in Timeline tool, but others we had to use a mix of Timeline and Fungus to get the effects we wanted. The manager has other small functions like this, including functions to play a cutscene, change levels, or toggle the flavor text on a character.

Fungus flowchart for the final level + endings

Here are some examples of the different functions in action, as well as screenshots of the cutscenes.

Momdusa calling Melita to breakfast

Example of the player's blur - this was triggered through Fungus!

Example of NPC flavortext

Player meeting Irving, our gearhead love interest

Melita being cute and making small talk with Irving

All in all, I learned a ton from this project. My previous experiences had been in game jams or rapid prototyping, so really delving into creating a solid game and not a messy prototype was new and much appreciated. It was incredibly enlightening to work with students that had different skill sets than I did, in a larger scale than I had done previously. It's a small game overall - maybe a 15 minute playthrough, maybe a little more if you go for all the endings - but it's certainly the most polished thing in my portfolio. I had the most amount of time to work on it, and was afforded the ability to focus almost wholeheartedly on it's creation. If I could do it better, or had more time, I would spend more time polishing the narrative. I can find little things - phrases that don't quite flow the way they should, plot points that aren't realistic or are cheesy, etc - but I know that in 4 months this is a wonderful game and story. People genuinely enjoyed the story, complimenting us on our unique approach and fun characters. SO for all the things I could nitpick, there are 20 more I wouldn't change.

Anyways.

I hope you enjoy playing Spektacles as much as I enjoyed creating it.