Published using Google Docs
TamaGUNchi GDD
Updated automatically every 5 minutes

Project "TamaGUNchi" - GDD

- 15 avril 2013 -

Play the prototype online here!: link

Introduction

Remember the Tamagotchis? Those tiny electronic egg-shaped toys with a tiny LCD display showing an alien creature that you had to take care of? They were all the craze during the '90. Be honest. You had one, huh? Did you manage to keep it alive for more than 10 days? Congrats!

TamaGUNchi is kinda like this. It is an interactive text adventure game where you are given a gun and you must take care of it. This means you must feed it bullets, play with it, cure it when it's sick, and clean up his poop. Yeah, you just read that correctly. In TamaGUNchi, your gun can poop. Take that, so-called realistic triple-A shooters!

Here's how it work. At first, you are given a gun but you can't play with him cause he's so hungry. (Yes, I'm now using "he" and "him" to talk about your gun because, for you, he's just like a real human being. A friend!) After you feed him, you can hug him! And wouldn't you know, he's now all tamed and friendly. Cool. Then you go on a walk and weird stuff can happen to you. It's all random events that will affect the stats of your gun. All these events have choices that you need to make which will affect the outcome of the story of the game and the stats of your gun. Will you chose to train your marksmanship skill at the shooting range or just spend that time flirting with the receptionist? Will you shoot the sheriff or the deputy? It's all up to you, and the outcomes and effect on your gun might surprise you!

While having a pistol is pretty rad by itself, after seeing an ad on the TV, what you really want is a bazooka. Wouldn't that be awesome? Good news is: your gun can evolve into better weapons. From pistol to shotgun to assault rifle to whatever. Yes, evolve! Just like the pokemans!

Unfortunately, all is not pink and flowers in the world of TamaGUNchi. While you gun is 100% cute and gentle at the beginning, the more it evolve into other more powerful weapons, the more uncontrollable it becomes. Like a baby tiger that is all cute and fluffy as a cub, when it becomes an adult, you'll have to be extra careful. An accident can happen so fast...

Project overview

TamaGUNchi is:

Final game form factor

The goal at the end of the incubator would be to have a final and complete game in the form of a highly polished and visually attractive interactive story in Unity. We say "highly polish" because, frankly, we don't think it will take that long to code it so we might as well make sure it's extra-awesome!

The release platform is not fully decided yet. We'll investigate possible release on PC, Mac and/or iOS. This will of course depend on which type of Unity licences the Incubator can provide us. With Unity, it is apparently easy to export in these various formats so we want to take this opportunity to test and learn this process. We also want to see the feasibility of selling the game on iOS and/or Steam. The game would be released in both French and English.

On top of that, we want our game to be a success in terms of visibility. For that reason, we want to really push the "marketing" aspect. This would includes creating video trailers, be present in the social medias and have a website where we can talk about the process of creating the game and posting pictures, sketches and general work in progress. We also want to explore the possibility of contacting the medias to have visibility on the gaming news websites. If the game is in good shape and have a good progress, we would like to submit for game contests and awards.

In other words, we want to game to be more a critical success than a commercial success. If the game triggers interesting conversations among fans, the press, and the medias, this will be a success for us.

How it works in the inside

In the current prototype, the gun have 3 stats (hunger, energy, mood) that unlocks over time to avoid overwhelming the player right at the beginning. Each of these stats have an action associated with it (Eat, Sleep, Play) for the user to choose, which are used to boost the stats of the gun. The game also track a certain number of "hidden" stats that are used to count the amount of food eaten, sickness, etc. and will affect certain state of the gun: poop, sick, pregnant, etc.

Every time these actions are done, there's a chance of getting a random event that will also affects the stats depending on the choice the player do. These random events range from going to the shooting gallery or getting a haircut or encountering a dangerous terrorist.

Beside these random events and the 3 main actions (Eat, Sleep, Play), the player can select a 4th action, which is to get a "Main Event". This is how the storyline progresses, in a semi-random, semi-linear way. These events usually have a condition attached to them that will make them more difficult to complete. For example, an event could require that you have a certain number of mood or energy or love points in order to complete it. If the player don't have the right amount of these stats to complete it, then the event is failed. The user will have to wait for the event to come back later in order to complete it. Completing these main events unlock more main events to be added in the Main Events pool. This is how the user progress in the story.

So, to recap, the game play loop looks like this: take care of your pet gun to keep its stats in balance while random events occurs. Then, do a main event to progress in the story. This will cause imbalance in the stats (example: an event might use lots of energy or cause a mood drop) so the user will have to go back to step one and rebalance the stats to continue. And so forth.

As for the story, while the first events are quite silly, the more the player progress, the more we want him to question what he is doing. In the prototype, you'll notice that the later events are just downright creepy (kissing your gun and having "intimate" moment with it). Now, what is not yet in the prototype is the fact that the gun become more dangerous to the player and his environment. He will start to do stuff that you did not intend to do or attack you or others by accident. For example, we could introduce a character during the game that is here to help you and your gun, but later in the game, you would kill that person by accident. The plan is that the player will understand that guns are not toys and definitely not fun to use or even carry around. Of course, this will be a challenge for us to balance between the silliness of the beginning and the serious tone of the second half of the game.

Stuff to improve from the prototype

(1) Visually, the game looks like a cheap Twine game.

How to solve:

While Twine was useful to quickly create our prototype, we'll switch to Unity for the real game. We want to the game to have a full UI in the style of the mockups pictures seen below. Sam will creates the various states of the guns, and work to animate them.

(2) Beside the story progression, the game mechanics are not very involving yet.

How to solve:

We plan to make some changes to the prototype so that the player have more meaningful choices to do. For example, we could have different pools of our "Main Events" that the player could choose to draw from. Let's say we have 3 pools separated by locations like shooting range, street and school. Each location would have its own set of random event, which would give the player at least some choices and better sense of progression.

We also want that some decisions done previously affect the story later on. This will actually be pretty easy to implement by the way our narrative system works.

(3) Not enough emphasis on the social message

How to solve:

Since the social message is one of the main aspect of the game, it need to be included in every aspect of the narrative. While the writing style can vary from parody and mocking tone to a more serious tone, it is important to keep an eye on the social criticism that we want to communicate.

One of the way we could add this is by adding conflict between what your gun wants to do and what is actually good for your gun. For example, your gun could have a "Fulfillment" stat that increase when you do gun related action (ie. killing people) but decrease when you select the more peaceful options. This idea is not fully clear yet, but the objective would be to create a conflict in the gameplay that would force the player to think about what he is doing and the choices he makes. Doing actions that are good on a moral standpoint would make your gun sad which would then augment the risk of him breaking loose and causing harm.

* * *

Application form questions:

Why does your game matter (in the social, cultural and political sense)?

Point 1. The National Rifle Association (NRA) recently suggested that, in order to avoid mass shooting in schools, the schools should hire armed guards. In other words, in order to protect the citizen from the guns, we need more guns. They were about this close to suggest we should actually give guns to children.

Point 2. The American culture and entertainment industry always pay particular attention to guns. Guns are given import plot points in movies. They benefit from intense work in the design of their look and the sounds they make. Weapons have names. They have backstories. They are character that are almost as alive as the other human characters. From an external point of view, this fetishism on weapons seems unhealthy.

Point 3. The triple-A video game industry focuses way too intensely on firearms. There hasn't been any major video game in the recent years without firearms in them. It seems the only mode of interaction with other characters in modern games is not by talking or touching, but only by shooting. Also, the way the gamers talk about the weapons, knowing each of them by their intricate names and nicknames, knowing all their specs by heart seems surreal and, again, unhealthy.

For these reasons, I wanted to create a game that will parody these aspects of society, culture and gamers. If people want to give personality and names to guns, well, their guns will now return their love to them. On the other side, we want to make clear to players that their beloved weapon is, and has ever been, a dangerous tool.

In what way is your game new, innovative or experimental?

Your gun can become pregnant and give birth to a BBgun. 'nuff said!

But seriously, it appears to be that there has never been a game made with the intention mocking guns or the culture of weapons. We could very well be the first to tackle the subject. (But of course, I might be wrong on that point, which would actually be a good news!)

Why would the game and your team benefit from an open collaborative academic based incubation program?

The dedicated workspace and hours should be a great tool to help us focus 100% on the project.

The notoriety of Concordia and the program itself should be useful to add credibility to our project. We are hoping this will encourage the media to talk about the game.

Finally, we are hoping the mentors and other participants will be helpful in terms of comments and playtesting so that the game can focus on its core social message. When the more "deep" aspect of the story will be implemented, we definitely want to know if it caused playtesters to think about guns and see if it changed their view of them in movies and culture.

Schedule

June 15 :

June 15 to July 15 :

July 15 :

July 15 to August 15 :

August 15 :

August 20 :