Project 3: Development Journal

For this final project, Neyva and I were inspired by the prompts of wonderland and escape room. For us, escape room loosely represented the existence of a motivation or objective for the player that would result in some sort of relief. Wonderland then served as inspiration for our setting, which led us to consider fantasy or supernatural elements for it. We eventually started discussing the possibility of obtaining inspiration for our experience from folklore – more specifically, Japanese Yōkai folklore, which deals with supernatural monsters, spirits, and demons. After researching different Yōkai, we came across the kitsune, or fox spirits with various abilities, such as being able to shape-shift into humans. According to Japanese folklore, kitsune could have up to 9 tails, with the highest number of tails representing the fox’ age, power, and intelligence.

There are also various types of kitsune. The two that are key figures in our game are the following:

• Nogitsune: Nogitsune are wild foxes that do not serve as messengers for the gods. They are known to torment, trick, and even possess humans, sometimes using their shape-shifting powers to do so.
• Zenko: Also known as benevolent foxes, the zenko are mostly associated with the deity of rice, Inari. These kitsune are white in color and are also known to be able to ward off evil, also at times serving as guardian spirits. They also help protect humans against nogitsune. 

Given that representations of kitsune are usually found in shinto shrines in the form of statues, we decided to situate our game in a shinto shrine as well.

In terms of our story, we decided that we would like it to be based off of the zenko and the nogitsune foxes. This is how the story/experience would pan out:

• User finds themselves in the middle of a shrine/cemetery during sunset
• As the sun sets, the environment starts looking more hostile/surreal (haze, colored skybox, creepy background sound)
• Once the environment is fully “surreal”, two foxes appear in front of the user. Both have 9 tails and look similar. (one is an Inari fox, the other is a wild fox that has disguised its appearance)
• The user is prompted to “make a choice” and pick one of the two foxes.
• If the user chooses the Inari fox, the environment goes back to how it normally was (we are still considering different options on how to make this outcome more interesting/exciting)
• If the user chooses the wild (bad) fox (which is disguised as a good kitsune), they stay trapped in the surreal space.

After pitching our project to the class, we received very helpful feedback from everyone. This is a summary of what we still need to consider as we work on the story/game:

• Ending: does it end due to a user’s option? Or just naturally? Or does the user just take the Google Cardboard off ?
• How do we hint at the choice that the user has to make? → we could possibly have the kitsunes be on different path and then the user chooses between them → does this mean that they move somewhere else after following the path? The user appears in another part of the shrine?
• How do we create a satisfying ending for the good fox? (right now the “bad ending” seems more interesting)

04/29 Update

First, here’s our storyboard for our paper prototyping session. As can be seen, the user starts in the middle of a path. At each side of the path, the kitsune will appear.

Since our paper prototyping sessions, Neyva and I’ve been bouncing a lot of ideas back and forth as we continued to decide what would happen with our story. Following Sarah’s advice of establishing definitely what would happen in the story before focusing on the environment building, we considered a lot of options before finally deciding on a sequence that we think is technically possible and which also maintains the integrity of our original story. A first new idea that we had was inspired by a scene in the movie Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, where the protagonists are trapped inside an illusion that has them repeat the same experience/time 3 times until they realize they are trapped, successfully breaking the curse. It’s a really really interesting sequence, which can be seen here from minute 56 – 1:08 (shorter version from 1:02 – 1:08)

For our project, we similarly were thinking that now, instead of just having to make one choice between 2 foxes that either saves or dooms you, you start the experience by getting cursed by the bad kitsune. The curse is having the illusion of choice, of being able to escape by choosing one of the foxes. In reality, with each choice, the same experience repeats itself: the user finds themselves again in the same shrine and presented again with what seems like the same choice. Trapped, the only way the user is able to break the curse is to identify what is off in the environment (what has changed) and clicking on it instead of on the foxes. As we were fleshing out this idea, however, we questioned how hard it would be for users to catch onto the fact that they were stuck in this cycle, regardless of what fox they chose. We were concerned that instead, users would be confused and even bored about the experience if they thought that all there was to it was a cycle of choosing between foxes that seemingly didn’t make a difference. In light of this, we then started thinking about the possibility of telling the user to look closely at the environment, implying that their attention to detail will ultimately affect their experience. As such, following this line of thought, we finally developed how our experience will finally work:

1. User appears in a shrine/cemetery at sunset.
2. A text overlay states: “Look closely around you. Click when you’re ready.” the user has the option now to look around and pay attention to their surroundings, and decide when they are ready to continue
3. Once the user clicks, the atmosphere changes eerie (the skybox turns dark, the lanterns become weird colors). 2 kitsune walk towards the user and sit at a distance from them. A new text overlay states: “Select the 3 changes”. An overlay on top of each fox contains a riddle/list of objects that they suggest the reader to pick. The good fox contains a list of the correct choices. The bad fox contains one wrong item. By having this overlay on top of the foxes, the user can at least have a hint of what they can select (or which fox’ advice they’d like to follow), if they are unable to track the changes.  
4. Using their Raycast pointer, the user must now identify the 3 items/things that changed in the surrounding (this does not include the atmospheric change). Once they choose on an object, it will turn a highlight color to indicate that it has been selected.
5. Once the 3 choices are made, the following could happen depending on whether the items are correctly selected or not:
6. If they are properly selected: the bad fox walks away and the environment goes back to normal. Overlay states: “Good job! You made it.”
7. If they are not properly selected: the bad fox walks towards you. Overlay states: “Wrong choice”. Everything goes black.

And an update on how the environment is starting to look like:

05/04 Update

Our playtesting session today was really helpful in giving us a better sense of how to hone down our interactions. These are additional notes we took during our playtesting session today:

1. Give better indication at the beginning of paying attention to details. Mention some change.
2. Possibly go back? Possibly do 3 rounds or something like that? –> perhaps this is not necessary if the text at the beginning is obvious
3. Right now, second change looks like nighttime, change so it looks more surreal
4. Sunset: take out shadows
5. Have the text in front of you as soon as you go in. Experiment with overlay vs with set position

05/07 Update

After the second playtesting sessions, here are some additional notes that Neyva and I are considering to improve our project. Update, 5/13: after implementing the changes, I’m adding more descriptions on what we ended up doing.

• Text resolution/canvas overlay: must be responsive to fit large resolution screens

• Text overlay: in order to avoid people from clicking instantly and skipping the first part of the experience, we decided to implement a script that disables mouse clicking after 10 seconds. After these 10 seconds, a text will be shown prompting people to “click when you’re ready”. Furthermore, after clicking once, users are prompted, “are you sure?” so they reconsider this choice.
• Scene change: we still need to make the new environment seem more surreal/ominous. This can be done by changing the skybox to make it have more unnatural colors and perhaps adding fog or another particle system. This is how the lighting looked like at first, when we wanted to have the user start at sunset:

After realizing people would confuse the change of scene with just nighttime due to the fact that they were previously in a sunset setting, we decided to change it to being during the day. This would make the change of scene more prominent.

Layout: to avoid people from thinking that they can potentially move to other parts of the road throughout the experience, we have decided to change the layout of the shrine/cemetery. Instead of placing the user in what seems to be the middle of a road, the user will now be placed in the middle of a circular layout, with only one opening (which is where the foxes will come in from). By having everything directly surrounding them, the user would now be able to pay more attention to the details surrounding them. This is how the environment originally looked like:

Objects: following the previously mentioned layout, we decided to place more “flashy” and distinguishable objects in front of the user to emphasize how these are the ones that will potentially change, not the ones in the background.

• Movement of foxes : how does their movement start? do they just appear? maybe every few seconds they switch between sitting & standing idle (to make them more realistic). In the end, we decided that both foxes appear running towards the user. Once they stop, the new instructions appear, suggesting that these are related to the foxes
• The pointer: originally, we wanted the pointer to change when it hovered on a selectable object (we decided not to implement this in the end as we realized that the changing color of the hovered object material is enough indication for users to know they can select it)
• The riddles: the riddles for us were key in giving more depth to the experience, as well as involving the foxes more into our narrative, as we had originally envisioned. In a way, even though users are not necessarily selecting foxes anymore as we had thought at the beginning, they can choose which fox to trust. Regarding the content and style of the riddles, we aimed at making them seem cryptic yet understandable after a few read-throughs, and we hope that players are able to take the time to try to decipher them.

Explanation of riddles:

Right (correct answer)

• “In our likeness we stray from the path, one good one bad”: referring to the identical fox statues changing their facing direction
• “Look for the red, that emerged from the stone. Both small and large, they will return you home”: referring to the small tori gate that turned from being stone gray to red, as well as the surrounding fence that completely changed from being stone to being red and made of wood
• “Look for the red, that emerged from the stone

Left (‘incorrect answer)

• “One light guides the path to where you came. It burns not”: referring to the candle (wrong choice)
• “As the stone grows cold, a red outer edge is your first guide”: referring to the fence that became wooden and red
• “Only one of us will save you, although both of us are key”: referring to the fox statues