P2 Writeup: A New Job
Ayana Griffin, Angela Wei, Miranda Liu, Regina Sevilla
Artist Statement
“A New Job” is a narrative-driven game which, at first glance, simulates the excitement of starting a job at a new company. As undergraduate students nearing graduation and the working world, we wanted to create a game that reflects both our interest and our skepticism of the corporate world. As a player, you start as a naive intern whose job is to uncover the strange things happening in this workplace. As you work your way up the corporate ladder, and along the way, you gradually uncover the dark backstory behind the company and its employees.
The central mechanic of the game is talking to the other employees and giving them objects in order to solve small “puzzles.” One puzzle involves rekindling an office romance between a love-stricken ditz and an old grump; another involves retrieving files from a closet for another employee. The most important task is getting the other employees coffee, a classic intern task. But these tasks which all initially seem “normal” all reveal something sinister, strange, or creepy about this unknown company. What seems like a “reward” results in terrible implications for the other workers. (Spoiler alert: getting promoted means also getting other employees fired.)
The vast majority of the artwork in the game is original so that the game’s visual style can reflect the complexities of the office: we wanted to strike a balance between eerie, sterile, and cute. All the employees are cute, chibi NPCs which bounce up and down in classic Pokemon fashion, but the office is black and white. The office is full of plants, carpets, couches, but seems oddly sparse, empty, with more desks than NPCs.
“A New Job” is meant to be fun, but by participating in the fun, the player also becomes implicit in the unethical, strange things the company is doing. The more you play, the more the lighthearted facade falls away to reveal the soulless, pointless horror of the corporate world. You can’t help but get other people fired; you can’t help but participate; you have no other choice. At the heart of “A New Job” is the question: how possible is it to exist in a system like the corporate world and escape unscathed?
Iteration of Concept
After our initial brainstorm and converging our ideas, we decided to create a game that would center around an internship or office setting, drawing on common stereotypes associated with tech companies – something particularly relevant to us as Stanford students. We were all very interested in creating a narrative-driven game, with complex characters and a complex plot. This is why we thought of a plot where the player, excited about their internship at a seemingly ideal company, gradually uncovers disturbing secrets about their workplace. We really wanted it to feel cutesy at first, and more and more terrible, like Doki Doki Literature Club. Our biggest inspiration was other RPG games like Undertale or Off, which all used the pixel art, cutesy 2D format to critique a larger system. Some of our first ideas for the tutorial: having to sign a document that would have terrible implications later on, dressing up for the first day at the office.
our first in-class p2 game concept brainstorming
We created our characters by first thinking of classic office-type characters — like the “office mom,” which became Judy, or the office grump, which became Ralph. We then developed each character by giving them increasingly specific traits. For instance, one of our characters, Barry, evolved into a French conspiracy theorist grappling with the personal turmoil of his wife leaving him and taking their children. We wanted this office experience to be highly specific, like the narratives in Stardew Valley (but better). The narrative and the characters were the most important part.
Initial character sketches and role-ideating
We had some trouble identifying the actual objective of the company. What makes this company so evil? Some of our initial ideas were specific unethical things like drones, military missions, or animal poachers, that kind of thing. But none of these ideas felt quite right; they were too literal manifestations of evil, and we weren’t trying to critique any specific thing. We were trying to critique the concept of an office job. We finally settled on the company as producing some sort of complacency drug that is used in the coffee, because it is such a central mechanic of the game. You have to give other people coffee in order to advance, to get promoted, to win the game – you have to be complicit in the company’s evil to win!
Target Audience
This game is for anyone who has ever worked an office job, will work an office job, knows someone who works an office job, and hates/loves/yearns for an office job. As college students, we are thinking about and preparing to enter the corporate world. We are tackling simultaneous feelings of cynicism and pride, dread and excitement. This game will speak to any student who has ever questioned their career aspirations, and feared what working in an office job entails.
Scope
Our game is targeting a slice. Our slice represents the first level of our game, where the player starts as an intern at a new company. However, as levels progress, the player continues to find eerie, strange details about the company, many of which seem to tie back to coffee. Here is a general, loose overview of the storyline for the future levels:
Day 1: Good Work.
You are an intern.
Setting: The player’s first day involves integrating into the office culture through a seemingly innocuous task that begins to hint at deeper complexities.
Tasks/Puzzles:
Deliver Coffee: Player is tasked with delivering coffee to all employees, facilitating introductions and casual conversations. This task helps the player learn the layout of the office and gain initial insights into each coworker’s personality. Here, they also realize that drinking coffee makes them move faster.
Storyline Progression:
- The orientation introduces the company’s tight control over its employees, masked under the guise of care/efficiency/something weird is going on at the company.
- While delivering coffee, the player notices Judy’s preference for her own herbal tea from home over the company-provided coffee, hinting at her nonconformity.
- The player finds a dead, happy-looking cat in the closet, and the closet reeks of coffee.
- The player has to choose to “snitch on,” and therefore fire, either Barry or Judy.
Day 2: Team Work
You are an employee.
Setting: With Judy or Barry now fired and the player taking their place as an employee, the player is given more responsibilities and a role in fostering team spirit, which reveals more about personal lives and company culture.
Tasks/Puzzles:
The player is responsible for organizing an event aimed at boosting morale and fostering teamwork. This involves choosing activities, coordinating with catering, and getting input from coworkers on their preferences.
Storyline Progression:
- Judy or Barry has been fired 🙁
- The player becomes more aware of the company’s invasive practices as they navigate the logistics of the event, noting how employee participation in such events is heavily monitored and seemingly mandatory.
- During preparations, the player has casual conversations with employees, including Brittany, who shares in confidence that she’s expecting a baby with Ralph (this is the romance player had helped facilitate in the first level). Brittany expresses concerns about how this might affect her position, given the company’s focus on productivity.
- The player recalls the conversation with Brittany and decides to report her pregnancy to the boss, thinking it might help accommodate her needs.
Day 3: Maximizing Productivity
You are the manager.
Setting: As the player becomes more enmeshed in the company’s operations, the cracks in the facade become clearer.
Tasks/Puzzles:
The player is asked to report on employee engagement at the bonding event, including observations on who seemed enthusiastic about company initiatives and who did not. They are now a manager, and also need to squash unions and look into expansion opportunities.
Storyline Progression:
- Brittany is fired under vague pretexts (downsizing), which shocks the player and confirms suspicions about the company’s ruthless policies.
- These events catalyze the player’s realization that the company might be using the coffee and other means to control and manipulate the staff.
Conclusion
The player snoops and finds out the company’s true intentions: the coffee contains a new compound to make workers complacent and more productive, and this office has been used as a way to test it before the launch.
The boss offers the player a role as their successor. The justification is that the player has shown the precise blend of initiative, discretion, and ruthlessness required to lead the company. I mean, they revealed a coworker’s pregnancy and went through confidential materials. The boss may also hint at their own desire to retire or move on to other ventures, seeing the player as the ideal person to continue the company’s agenda. At this point, the player has drunk enough of the coffee that they cannot say no. This sheds light on previous events– why Judy doesn’t drink the coffee, why Brittany was fired due to her pregnancy, why there was a dead cat in the closet.
Puzzle Objectives
The puzzle element of our game is woven into the narrative and architecture, requiring players to piece together the story behind the company and uncover the source of the oddities. By interacting with NPCs, exploring the office space, and completing tasks, players gather clues and insights that reveal the hidden truths of their workplace. This narrative-driven puzzle design ensures that players remain engaged and motivated to progress through the game, driven by curiosity and the desire to solve the mystery. This appeals specifically to the information domain of psychological needs that games meet–we want to explore, understand, and seek knowledge. After each playtest, we would ask if players are intrigued and want to know more, and the answer was always yes.
Concept Map
The player progresses through our game by completing different tasks prompted by each of the five other characters. The dialogue and information revealed about our characters and narrative are dependent upon the player’s completion of each task. Here is the hidden To-Do List of action items that the player must complete for each character and the corresponding decision trees that determine how the story progresses based on the player’s task completion progress.
The dialogue that corresponds to each event can be found here.
Iteration of Gameplay
Prototype Creation
As our first prototype, we decided to create a paper version of our game idea because it was easiest to develop a strong narrative on paper. Each pile of index cards represented a set of dialogue that would occur if a certain action occurred. We made individual index cards for objects that the player could hold. All the dialogue in the narrative naturally evolved as a result of this process; we came in with some characters, a couple loose ideas at who they would be, the mechanic of coffee, and the prototype became a full, fleshed-out thing with puzzles built in. Some ideas that emerged out of this prototype: the closet storyline with a dead cat, the storyline with rekindling Ralph and Brittany’s love, and the choice between Barry and Judy. We also had a to-do list that would guide the player through each puzzle they had to complete: email boss, print, etc. etc. By creating a tangible, easily modifiable prototype, we could better visualize and experiment with the game’s setting—an office space—and its various dialogue pathways.
This approach proved particularly beneficial for iterative design. It meant that we could easily craft and revise dialogue options based on real-time feedback. During playtesting sessions, participants would verbally indicate their choices or actions to the moderator, who then provided them with the corresponding index cards – the corresponding dialogue – from the prototype. This method was far simpler and more efficient than prematurely coding complex decision trees. By using this prototype, we were able to gather valuable insights and feedback from playtesters without the need for extensive digital setup, ensuring that the narrative was robust and engaging before moving on to the technical aspects of game development.
Playtest 1
What was tested:
For this playtest we wanted to answer the question “Does our prototype successfully create a space with characters that meaningfully add to the game’s objective and theme?”
What was observed:
During this playtest, our tester was confused about his initial goals, particularly questioning why he was interacting with certain characters. Another point of confusion was a plot element—a dead cat found in a closet—which left him wondering about its relevance to the storyline.
Feedback on character interactions was generally positive, suggesting that these are a highlight of the gameplay experience, aligning with our goals for the game. Our tester noted curiosity about specific characters, such as Barry, and his potential involvement in a major plotline concerning another character, Judy. However, the player wanted these interactions to be more meaningful and impactful. He noted that our game most resembled “people puzzles,” in which players must engage and respond to the character personalities and to advance in the game.
Lastly, our playtester suggested that the list of tasks provided to players was unnecessary, as engaging with characters through dialogue was sufficient to guide them through the game. This feedback emphasizes the game’s narrative-driven approach, where dialogue not only propels the story but also serves as a mechanism for player progression.
What was changed for the next playtest:
Based on this set of initial feedback, we removed the task list, and began adding more to the dialogue to further progress the narrative and add some more dimension to the characters. We also added a tutorial scene with the boss, George, and the office mom, Judy, to better orient players.
Playtest 2
What was tested:
For this playtest we wanted to answer the question “Does our game have a compelling narrative? Does the objective of our game allow our players to interact with the prototype correctly in a way that is intriguing enough to go on to the next level?
What was observed:
Our key take away for this playtest was that we need some mechanic of players getting “stuck” when trying to talk to certain characters while a necessary task has not yet been completed. We found that our storyline of the boss George prompting you, the intern, to provide crucial information about the office unfolded too quickly. It was a repeated occurrence that playtesters skipped the crucial step of delivering each character coffee in order to unlock the subsequent dialogue trees that unveiled the suspicious lore of our office. The playtesters seemed to like the theme of our game and made decisions based on their likings towards the characters’ personalities. For example, our TA playtester specifically liked that the mentor Judy called her by the name “dear.” She then dismissed the idea planted from the colleague Barry that Judy was suspicious which proved to us that our character development was starting to meaningfully add to our game’s narrative.
Photo of playtest 2, where the tester read dialogue off of cards handed to them by the moderator and physically moved their paper character to make decisions such as which coworker to talk to next.
What was changed for the next playtest:
We added a “dead end” mechanic when players attempt to interact with a character or move on to the next task prematurely. We also added more hints to imply that each character, including the Judy who gave this instruction, needs a coffee delivered to them in order for all clues and appropriate storylines to unfold before ending the level. In addition, we continued to add more personality and tropes to each of the characters by adding to and refining the dialogue.
At this stage, we also began the transition to a digital platform. As we transitioned the narrative concept into a digital game format, our initial focus was on refining the look and feel of our game. We opted for a pixel art style, which would invoke nostalgia and simplify the character design. The little pixel art NPCs were also so cute! The grayscale palette was chosen to reflect the blandness of typical office spaces and subtly hint at the eerie nature of the company without overwhelming the game’s lighter tones.
We also found an office asset pack online that became the basis for the assets in the game, but recolored it to suit our own purposes. All the assets had to be modified because when black and white, the contrast was completely off (having bright colors makes it a lot easier to convey a lot of information). Starting with modifying pre-made assets then made it a lot easier to actually draw pixel art from scratch – it was difficult to try to convey so much information with such few pixels, and such a stripped down palette! We had to change the look of a couple characters to make it work with pixel art while retaining their personalities. For example, in our initial prototype, the boss George wore a monocle, but when translated to pixel art, it looked strange and awful. Now he no longer has a monocle, but he is chubbier than the rest of the NPCs, and he has a cute moustache and a strand of silver-gray hair.
At this stage was also when we had to get serious about designing the room. How would furniture and NPC placement work to guide the player through the story, especially if the furniture was constrained to the assets we had? For example, we have only vertical, not horizontal desks, and only a handful of NPCs.
We also needed to decide on the actual mechanics of the game. The problem with this was that none of us had any game engine experience! We relied a lot on Gamemaker’s tutorial, Little Town, to learn everything. We picked the space bar to interact and arrow keys to move because that is how most RPGs do it. At this stage is when we started realizing how complicated actually coding the game was – we faced a lot of technical challenges even in this early phase, with blurry pixel art (as shown below) and complicated z-axis mechanics.
An initial iteration of the game.
Playtest 3
What was tested:
This playtest was focused on getting initial feedback on the art style, architectural space, and design decisions. This differs heavily from the previous playtests, which were solely aimed at getting feedback on the narrative elements. Now that we were making the transition to a digital platform, we wanted to make sure the art fits correctly with the narrative. The question we aimed to answer was “what mood do you anticipate for the game narrative given the architecture, color scheme, and game space?”
What was observed:
This first look and feel prototype of our game was extremely successful in refining the details of our art style. Our TA playtester Jeong immediately observed that the setting was filled with cubicles, a coffee machine, and coworkers and described our art style as cute. The objects in our space and the opening title screen made it clear that they were an intern. We observed that our playtester was accurately able to interact with our NPCs and they even grew likings and dislikings toward certain characters based on the personalities that we gave them. The TA was a bit confused when she discovered some awkward and offcentered pathways while navigating the office cubicles and characters. She also noted that it wasn’t clear when to stop talking to characters. She suggested using sound, number, or symbol to demonstrate the end of a dialogue and influence progression to the next step of the game. Similarly, she suggested zooming out the camera of the game space so players could see what they wanted to explore and talk to next. Another piece of feedback was confusion about what the coffee was the only object colored and what the intentions were behind it. Overall, when interacting with this prototype, our player was laughing for a long time! She was really quite amused by the NPC personalities and the cuteness of our art style.
Photo of playtest 3, where the tester prepared to interact with the intro frame of our game, which revealed our art style, game name, and setting.
What was changed for the next playtest:
We knew that we wanted to immediately work on fixing character and object collisions. We also took feedback about the coffee machine’s color and changed it from blue to including one pixel of red. We chose to keep a small element of color because we did want it to stand out and imply that the coffee delivery task is central to the objective of our game. We also decided to add more signals of progress to our objects such as displaying character names inside text bubbles and a symbol inside our dialogue bubbles that imply how much of the conversation is left. We also desperately needed an introduction sequence! But that couldn’t happen until other mechanics of our game were clearer (and we figured out how to even do it at all).
Playtest 4
What was tested:
For this playtest we want to answer the question “Does our mechanic of discovering the storyline through character interaction successfully integrate our players into the narrative of being an intern in an office and create a mood of mystery?”
What was observed:
From this playtest, we observed that our player
- Checked out the coffee immediately
- Noted that the office does not seem like a fun place: “people are greeting me as the new intern”
- Some characters don’t seem excited (especially the grumpy guy near the middle!)
- Was quite attentive to colors in the game! She assumed that she could interact with anything that was red
- Noted that seeing characters move would be cool and add immersion to our game
What was changed for the next playtest:
Character movement itself is a big part of the storytelling and spatial environment–animating the characters changed the experience and brought it to life. Immediately after we (Angela) refined the sprites and added in animations, our playtesters’ reactions were more enthusiastic and it was obvious that they were excited about the art style and spatial environment.
Video of Angela learning how to walk (for animation purposes)
Playtest 5
After further refining the art style, this playtest aimed to get more feedback about it and see how the improved spatial layout and animations contributed to the player’s experience. In the fifth playtest, the initial reactions were overwhelmingly positive, with enthusiastic exclamations like, “Is that your game?? OH MY GOSH IT’S SO CUTE” and “AHH.” The tester quickly recognized the game’s charm and was extra excited when she learned that there was also music. During the playtest, she did not explore all available dialogues, choosing instead to speak with each NPC only once. This led us to realize the need for a clearer dialogue layout, as we had to instruct the tester that they could talk to characters multiple times. She suggested adding animations for interactions, humorously commenting, “You should animate kissing.” Despite these minor issues, the tester intuitively knew to give coffee to the characters, which was encouraging. However, she suggested implementing a tutorial to guide new players, noting, “Right now I am just walking around.” She also highlighted the need for character name indicators, as she was unsure who was who. The tester enjoyed the walking animation, finding it “simple but effective,” and appreciated the smaller details, like the hair moving in the animations. Her excitement and engagement were evident in comments such as, “Oh no.. I gotta be a corporate girly??” and a strong desire to give coffee multiple times.
Playtest 6 (Jeong)
This next playtest, happening right after the previous one, aimed to get more perspective on the updated art and layout of the space. During the sixth playtest, our tester Jeong was visibly entertained, dancing to the music and nodding her head. She exclaimed, “Oh my god, it’s so cute!” and particularly loved the character design, repeatedly saying, “Look at my little bowl cut.” Jeong, like the previous tester, humorously mentioned the possibility of animating kisses, “I gave him a little smooch.” However, some elements of the game were not immediately clear to her; she did not recognize the door as a door and asked, “Am I supposed to solve something?” She also found it challenging to identify which character she was playing, suggesting that an arrow or highlight might help. Jeong did not focus on the gender of the player character, noting instead the cuteness of the design, which emphasizes the game’s visual appeal. This playtest, along with the fifth one, showed us that the art and layout was compelling and engaging–and we now needed to focus on refining the dialogue sequences and actual interactions in the game.
Playtest 7 (Annabelle)
This playtest aimed to test what mechanics needed to be prioritized when implementing the rest of our game within the span of the last couple days. Our prototype included all our characters’ dialogue, completed art style and layout, and coffee task, but the dialogue logic and mechanics of delivering and receiving items were not fully functional. From this playest we gathered that the biggest problem was a player not being able to tell if they had completed the coffee task. It was very unclear to our playtester whether or not they were correctly pressing “C” to pick up and deliver coffee because there was unclear indication from the game that a player had a cup of coffee in their hand/inventory. Another simple, yet effecting change that we realized we needed to prioritize was labeling the name of each character throughout their dialogue string. In the following video Anabelle clearly states “ I would like to know their names” because it wasn’t clear who characters were, such as the boss and Barry, when certain tasks required her to approach a specific officemate. The biggest thing we took away from this playtest was to have clear indicators of character names and item receiving/holding/delivering, because otherwise, our playtester was incentivized to spam the “space” button when craving progress and in turn, missed out on important information delivered by our dialogue boxes.
Playtest 8 – Final Playtest
To the extent of how much we were able to implement, our final playtest went just as we had hoped – we ultimately wanted to know “Do players enjoy A New Job and do the mechanics of completing each task work?”. We found that our playtester, Thrisha, thoroughly enjoyed the premise of being an intern on the first day at a new job. The process of completing each task characters prompted her to fulfill seemed to come pretty intuitively to her. Thrisha made it a point to specify that the game’s music and layout kept her engaged and immersed into the game. She pointed out that some characters were mean, but quickly realized that characters like Ralph seemed to warm up once she delivered the items he requested. Due to technical difficulties and time constraint, one challenge to the player that remained in our final game was the fact that players weren’t able to navigate through the tutorial and closet scene at their own pace. The text went pretty fast and wasn’t able to be paused, but luckily our player had a little bit of background context to what the objective of our game was. Another bug left in our game (which our playtester did not run into) was the progression of character dialogue when attempting to give a requested item to the wrong character (ex. Giving Judy the letter from Brittany that was meant for Ralph). However, despite this bug and the absence of our exit screen once the player votes who to fire, the essence of our game was successfully experienced by our playtester Thrisha, and she ended the game asking “I want to know what happens next!”
Architecture
Narrative Architecture
“A New Job” is about the story that it tells about the employees – the puzzles are “people puzzles,” which means that to solve them, you have to read the clues that the characters give you. Learning the game is about learning the people and their stories. But learning the game and succeeding in reading people’s stories means that you are complicit in “evil” – in firing people, in becoming part of the same system that destroys them.
There are two main storylines in the first level, where you are an intern and your main task is to give coffee to other people to find out what is suspicious about the employees. These storylines both eventually reveal something suspicious about the company – and force you to make sinister, uncomfortable choices on behalf of the company. They also allow the player to get to know each of the employees. The first involves (re)kindling the love between Ralph, an old grump, and Brittany, a love-stricken ditz, by giving Ralph Brittany’s letter. The second is finding out suspicious things about Judy through talking to and working with Barry.
In the first storyline, Ralph and Brittany’s love earns you Ralph’s trust, which allows you access the closet and see the dead cat. After you see the cat, Ralph confides in you his experience at the company – and reveals why he’s so grumpy at first! The point of this is to get a sense of how the company is quite strange, exhausting, and weird. Both Ralph’s dialogue and the dead cat imply that there’s something fundamentally wrong and weird about this company you’re supposed to be working for.
Ralph’s storyline is also at the heart of the game: at first, Ralph is the most openly hostile. He says things like “buzz off” and “be useless somewhere else.” He’s mean! But when you get to know him, he’s the only character that actually asks you what your name is (your name is Juno). You connect with him the most out of all the other characters, even though he is mean at first. You also find out that he is mean because the company has worn him out! It’s supposed to be the most emotionally rewarding storyline, because it’s also the most complex (you have to do like four tasks before you get this emotional reward).
The second storyline, the conflict between Barry and Judy, also hints at the strangeness of the company. When you work with Barry for the data, as George asks you to, and you check your email, you find out that something is weird about Judy! Then, to resolve this, you must talk to her and give her snacks, and when you do, you find out that Judy doesn’t actually drink coffee – but she lies to you about it. Barry is also super eccentric and French in his own right – he keeps talking about things being black and white and secrets that you have to find out. (He’s a conspiracy theorist.) The conflict is kind of a red herring – you’re meant to believe that, hmm, maybe it is the employees that are strange! What are these guys even talking about!
But both lead, eventually, to what is supposed to be the choice you have to make at the end of the level. We ran out of time to implement this in the actual game, but you’re supposed to choose between firing Barry or Judy based on what you find out about both of them at the very end, when George asks you about what you found out. When you do, Judy says, “My children!” and Barry says, “I am sad!” It’s supposed to illustrate the very real consequences of your actions – you made this happen! You were the one that found out their “suspicious behavior” and you ruined either Judy or Barry’s life! In this way, you are complicit in the evildoing of the company; but you also had no other choice. The game forces you to do it.
There are a couple of things wrong with the current implementation of the game, which is just because none of us had experience with any kind of game engine before making the game, but which should be fixed in later iterations. For example, you can finish the game without exhausting all the storylines, and you can also give Ralph Brittany’s letter without first giving him coffee or talking to him first. Theoretically, all of the storylines should only progress when the first “level” has been accomplished. But this is all technical difficulties, and we have already spent so many hours fixing just the tiniest and most annoying bugs…
Thus, the storylines are thus constructed to 1) reward you for getting to know the characters and 2) force your hand into being part of the strange, evil, remorseless actions of the company.
Spatial Architecture
The spatial architecture of “A New Job” was heavily inspired by classic 2D RPG type games like Pokemon, Off, and Undertale. We wanted to emulate the light, cutesy, nostalgic aesthetic of those games in order to give the strange, weird narrative more punch/juxtaposition, just like Undertale. The design of the actual rooms are supposed to guide the way that the player moves through space.
The overall aesthetic of the game is meant to be cutesy and nostalgic. The room has a top down, 3Dish perspective, just like Pokemon. You navigate through arrow keys and interact with the spacebar. The NPCs (all original designs) look kind of chibi-ish and cutesy, like in Pokemon. The way they look is also supposed to reflect their character: George, for example, as the boss, is nicer-dressed, has a fancy little gray hair detail, and is kind of chubby. The main character is supposed to be relatively nondescript, like Frisk from Undertale. The background music is 8-bit bossa nova, which is supposed to be light and cute and office-y.
There are three rooms that the player moves through. Two rooms are “cutscene” rooms, which convey information solely through video. George’s office functions as the tutorial, which we had to make a video. The closet sequence we also had to make a video because of technical limitations. The main room is where the player spends the most time and solves all the NPC related puzzles.
The tutorial, in George’s office, is meant to teach the player how to interact with all of the NPCs and move through space, in a very intuitive way. George and Judy are also the “authority” figures that you are supposed to answer to the most – Judy gives you hints and helps you throughout the office, while George is the one that tells you what to do. It’s not meant to be a video – we really wanted it to be like Pokemon, where the NPCs come up to you and talk to you, and you first learn the spacebar functionality. Then you are allowed to walk through the room, trying out moving and pausing and stuff, and enter the main room where you will be interacting with other NPCs and stuff.
The screen that shows between tutorial and main gameplay. We actually didn’t have time to implement the pause functionality, but the pause would theoretically bring you back to this screen.
The actual architecture of the room was designed to mirror a classic, open-office space with the limited amount of assets we could create. We found an asset pack online that we recolored to suit our own needs, and modified as needed. However, we also wanted it to look deceptively welcoming and simple. We added carpeting on the floors to create “hang out” areas. There’s plants and printers and all that stuff. There’s sparse decoration on the walls. All of this makes a classic office feel.
The space also guides your interactions with the NPCs. Moving through the space, you would ideally interact with Judy, interact with Brittany, who both are pretty obvious about wanting coffee, realize that you need to get people coffee, try to find coffee, and then do that for all the characters, which leads you to the other pieces of the puzzle. The way that the office is structured helps this: the player starts off at the bottom left corner, so that they’re encouraged to start talking to the closest NPCs right away – that is, Judy, the helpful lady, who is also conveniently right next to a coffee machine. George is in the top left corner because he “surveys” the whole space; Brittany and Ralph are close to each other, so that you can quickly figure out who Ralph is once you talk to Brittany; and Barry is off in his little corner because he’s kind of a weirdo.
To guide player interaction, only two things that are red are the vending machine and the coffee machine, which makes the player more inclined to interact with them. The NPCs also bounce in place, implying that they’re people you can talk to. The computer with the red paper on the side and no chair is also the only computer you can interact with.
The main game room (ignore the big question mark; it’s not in the actual gameplay).
If we had more time, we would also add sound effects for coffee, walking, and doors opening and closing, which would enhance the game a lot. We would probably also add more rooms to interact with, and more NPCs as well. It would also be nice if the NPCs could move or the player could interact with more objects, to make the experience even more immersive; it would be great if there were more kinds of objects that the player could interact with.
In summary, the spatial architecture of the game is meant to convey both the seemingly innocuous feel of the office (it’s supposed to feel like a normal office) and to guide the player through the narrative of the game.
Demonstration of Experience
Final Product
The link to the game:
https://gx.games/games/j29x0x/a-new-job-2024-/tracks/d77e9589-b605-42e4-bc24-03b3b6e7dc9e
Here are the links to the tutorial cutscene and the closet cutscene, because there’s a bug specifically when we exported it online in which those videos don’t show up.
Tutorial cutscene:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MhUx7EW9s8pSuOqHf04oNRVWvWZ0JNrE/view?usp=sharing
Closet cutscene:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NCf6CPp5SOmxKT9870QYhtrFaPoOD5Lp/view?usp=sharing
Enjoy!
*Note: some of the images in the post are quite low quality, but for greater resolution you can check them out in the google doc format of our writeup here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y3YZ8zU_xLrLLFWv4vwblyvc9-sMiRbo6cvu5n2F4zA/edit?usp=sharing
