Untitled Critter Game
Work-In-Progress Game by Houston, Lucas, Lucien, Ngoc, Nils
Premise
A young woodland critter ventures into a mysterious, AI-powered factory to uncover the source of the deforestation threatening its forest home, forming an uneasy alliance with a sentient piece of the factory’s artificial intelligence.
Section 1: Introduction
There used to be more here: more trees, more critters, more life. Now, one critter wants to know why the big, gray building that darkened the sky changed everything for the worse.
Curious, the critter enters through a pipe and begins to explore.
Section 2: Synopsis – Houston
The game follows the exploration of a factory near a forest devastated by deforestation, set in the future.
Our protagonist is a small woodland critter. This critter is young, innocent, and naive and lives in the forest half full of stumps. It is curious about the source of the thing destroying its home and decides to investigate it.
The game begins with the critter entering the factory from the woods through a pipe. There, our critter meets MiniAI, a small AI ethics companion who moves on rails, that asks for the critter’s help in repairing it. Together, they investigate the factory, discovering clues about the factory’s purpose in each area and solving tasks for MiniAI. For example, the critter could chew through a wire to disconnect a device. As they finish investigating areas, MiniAI unlocks new areas of the factory to explore.
Making their way through the factory, our protagonists slowly learn that the factory has been using the resources from the critter’s forest, and maybe even forests nearby, to build things nonstop. Worse, as MiniAI is repaired it is reconnected to the central intelligence of the factory, turned evil by its lack of an ethical component, and adopts its objective: to harvest resources to build with. The critter must defeat the central intelligence and restore its ethics to save their home.
In the end, it is too late. The factory was running for too long before our critter stopped it, the play realizes as they walk through a desolate landscape.
Section 3: Themes
The main themes we want to explore with this project are insignificance in the face of the immense and environmental loss. Ideally we want to invoke the ominous feeling of moving through a system far too vast to be understood by something as small and simple as yourself, like an ant wandering on a circuit board. We also want to explore the experience of seeing your home taken from you piece by piece for reasons outside of your understanding or control. These themes synergize well; the systems that destroy ecosystems are often beyond understanding, and the consequences of the incomprehensible are often destructive. They also lead us to helplessness, a dangerous theme to explore in a video game where agency is key to enjoyment, but we feel prepared to strike the balance between engaging gameplay and a narrative that emphasizes loss.
Section 4: Potential Additions
In our minimum viable product, we expect (a) some level layouts for the factory, (b) a digital rendition of the squirrel protagonist, (c) a movement script to allow the creature to traverse around the screens, and (d) scripts to facilitate scene-switching. We aim to create this game using the Unity Engine.
In addition to what we’ve identified as our core mechanics, below are a few outlines with possible directions the game can take, which may or may not make it into the final game:
Puzzles: Instead of having interactable objects to allow the player to progress, we can let them physically navigate these challenges themselves. In our minds, this will allow for more immersion and amplify an exploration aesthetic (e.g., chewing through the “correct wire”)
Reaction time: Instead of allowing the player to take as much time as they want, we can integrate certain features with a time limit. This addition will shift the challenge of our game to requiring some level of player skill, and requiring less of us as developers to create challenge through level design (e.g., moving through the teeth of a gear without letting it crush you)
Section 5: Tone
We want to take this game in a desolate, insignificating*, and intricate tonal direction. We want the player to feel small in comparison to the world around them, and invoke in them the sense of loss that a woodland creature might feel on witnessing a logging operation. We’re also interested in placing some focus on the curiosity of a young animal and the complexity of a vast machine, and the dynamic that that combination creates. A sort of “what happens if I gnaw on this wire” energy, an innocence that contrasts with the darkness of the world. Combined with the art style direction we’re considering, we believe that this will take us in a direction haphazardly described as “grimcute.”
*This is a real word because I used it just now. Insignificating: to make one feel insignificant. See also: kafkaesque.
Section 6: Implications of Theme
We believe that our core themes of insignificance and environmental destruction will be a relatable and cathartic theme to explore; as a species we are losing our home as a result of vast social and economic systems beyond our understanding, so we wanted to write about something similar. The tutorial level journey from a safe forest through a desolate landscape into a vast and incomprehensible factory mirrors the path many people take from a sheltered childhood to realizing how complex the world is and how little control they have over it. The detached empathy module that the player encounters early on relates to the way that many of the systems around us seem to have lost any connection with the value of human or animal wellbeing. The game’s desolate ending reflects the seeming hopelessness of making even great changes when the feedback loops of the climate crisis have already come so far.
Section 7: Setting
Critter Game– the temporary name of our game– is set in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic Earth, where AI robots are hard-coded to urbanize and expand industry through large AI-ran factories. In this world, humans have ceased to exist, and all that runs the world is AI. The playable character, a critter, begins the game in a barren forest, the aftermath of a nearby factory. The game shifts from this forest to the inside of the AI factory, where the majority of the game is set. In the game, there are different rooms and facilities to navigate within the factory, unraveling different parts of the narrative.
Section 8: Controls
The game will be played via keyboard controls that are customary to platformer-style games. For example, players will move via WASD/arrow keys, spacebar, and interact with the world either via mouse or standard controls like X, Z, or C. In terms of mechanics that the player can control, we are currently thinking of actions like moving, jumping, and interacting with game objects like the other characters, wires, robot parts, boxes, and metal bars.
Section 9: References
Our biggest influences are probably Rain World and Ori and the Blind Forest for the small creature lost in a big world theme. We also managed to accidentally replicate large swaths of the characters and plot of Portal 2. For our gameplay, we’re taking inspiration from old puzzle-side scroller flash games and similar modern indie concepts like the still-in-development Untitled Magnet Game.
- Related games
- Ori and the Blind Forest (small creature in a large world)
- Rain World (grimcute aesthetic, small creature in a large world)
- Cult of the Lamb (grimcute aesthetic)
- Portal 2 (character design, puzzles in a bigger machine)
- Endling (small creature negatively influenced by environment crisis)
- Untitled Magnet Game (2d puzzle design, character design)
- Stray (small creature in a large world, robot characters)
- Inside (small boy in factory he doesn’t understand, puzzle sidescroller)
- Limbo (same as Inside, but darker aesthetic + inside a larger machine at some points)
Section 10: Key Challenges for Design/Tech/Art
For the design, we envision that designing (1) the narrative progression, (2) map design, and (3) successful mood shifts during the game will be the most difficult part of design. For example, we need to think about what is feasible in terms of art, what flows best within the narrative, time constraints, and other factors that can influence the way we design our world space.
In terms of technology, our biggest obstacle is the (1) Unity learning curve for two of five of our team members. While everyone has coding experience, learning a new game engine can prove challenging. Additionally, we must make sure that everyone is comfortable with using (2) version control, so that everyone can have a chance to work on the project equally. In terms of specifics within the game, we may have trouble with (3) lighting, game animations, fluid movement (for platformers), and scene management for the various levels.
Lastly, creating compelling visual assets that depict the dystopian, post-human Earth accurately will also be a challenge. One of the biggest challenges may arise due to (1) time constraints for making game props, characters, and background art, (2) art style variances between team members, and (3) managing various game assets between 5 busy students.
Section 11: Game Target Audience
This is not a game for the faint of heart—but it is for people who are intrigued by investigating the mysteries of a bigger system.
Although the game’s premise is not complex mechanically, the game includes themes of destruction of nature, betrayal, and death. It is not designed to scare the user (like a traditional horror game) but to psychologically work with the player’s feelings. For a teen to mature audience, this game is designed to invoke intrigue and mystery through the key aesthetic of exploration.
Feel insignificant or like a cog in the system? Play as an innocent creature with no relation to a foreign system, and see what you can uncover, impact, and destroy.
