For our collaborative final project, we have decided to create a video game along with a user’s manual. The manual would be like other game manuals, which would describe how to set up the game, and how to play it.
The video game itself will be a first person horror game, set in the mid 19th century. It will feature both survival horror and psychological horror elements. We came up with this idea around Halloween time, even though by the time we’re finished it will be nearly Christmas. We’ve come up with a simple premise: the protagonist wakes up in a jail cell, with no recollection of how he got there, and the player will have to escape the dungeon using wits and cleverness, and not get killed in the process. The game will involve stealth, light puzzle solving, encounters with dangerous creatures with no combat system, as well as exploration. As of now we don’t have a name for the game yet. The game will run on Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Mac OS X, and Linux.
The game will be built upon HPL2 engine, using the developer tools offered by Frictional Games, creators of the engine and several horror games including “Amnesia: The Dark Descent” which is made on the same engine. This means our project will utilize models and mechanics from Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Time constraints are another reason for this decision. We predict the game will be around two hours long, again with time constraints being an attributing factor.
This project is relevant to the course because it involves plenty of technical writing. We’re going to be creating something, and then we will create instructions that show how to use it. Similar to the “Instructions and Usability Testing” assignment, but much more in-depth. Our project will also replicate what you get in the real world when purchasing a horror game – you get a game, and you get an instruction manual.
The purpose is simple: the world thrives on media. From video games to television and film, there is always a place for media entertainment. Horror is an established (although niche) video game genre, so the audience would be gamers… especially those who like horror games. Our project would provide entertainment to our audience, challenge their problem solving skills by introducing the player to challenging scenarios, and to a lesser extent it may challenge their analytical reading skills through in-game writing that builds on several themes such as desperation, selfishness, and society’s unwillingness to act in serious situations, complete with references to other popular horror movies and games. In addition, creating instructions for something as large as a game will build up our technical writing skills further.
The first step of our work plan is to make the game. We could do research on horror game design, to gather other ideas. This would include looking up things related to the setting we chose, to make a more authentic game. Once we’ve created and tested the game, we would move on to making a user’s manual for it. We’d get others to test the game with our manual as well, to see if they can get it running by following our instructions.
We’d be doing different types of research for this project, in addition to what was said above. We are considering doing research on the horror game industry, looking at its origins, looking at the most successful horror games as well as the least successful horror games. Our research might also include looking at other game manuals, so we can get a better idea on what to include in ours.
Jason will be doing the game development, since that’s a field he has years of experience in. The group will collaborate on the game design too. All three of us will gather research on the things mentioned, and we’ll all collaborate on the writing together. Jason will be proofreading and making sure all of the writing fits together, so that it doesn’t look like the writings of three people stitched together. The project-specific deliverables would be the manual to go with the game, and of course the game itself.
Aside from class meetings, we will meet after class in the library or somewhere else on school grounds, since it fits into our schedules. We will also be using an online chatroom through a program called Steam, so that’s two synchronous communication methods outside of class and it should be sufficient for completing the project. We’ll be sharing files through Dropbox or Google Drive.
By working on this project, we’ll greatly improve our collaboration skills since this project is large scale, it spans a long time, and it is worth half our grade. It will also bolster our technical writing skills, since we’d be writing instructions for such a large project that we made.
