The next phase in this project was to create the setting in which the story will take place.
Being an office based story game the first thing to approach is the creation of the office itself. Looking back to my research at examples such as Papers, Please, I can see that as a desk based game the approach is relatively clear and shouldn’t be over complicated.
I have tossed up whether to include a physicality to the desk, in buttons to challenge the characters etc but I felt as a product it is sounder to build this within the UI.
I started this process by sketching out what the office might look like.
Once sketched I was able to bring it in to figma to begin the digital development of the space. This process was super similar to how I designed the characters but a lot more monotonous, given how many pixels are in the space.
I was really happy with how the little office turned out, it isn’t supposed to look nice, actually the opposite. I think the simplicity will really push the story and not hinder anything.
The next area that was needed to be brought to life was Carries window. This is where the user will gain encouragement from Carrie and be informed of their progress so far. This area again will be super simple. It’ll just be a wall with a window in the same style as the main office as shown above. As before I did a super simple rough sketch for this one before bringing it to life digitally.
The final area for this project will be the users, ‘New Office’. This is at the ending of the story and acts as a reward to the user for doing good during the game. To communicate this the office should look nicer than the one before. A key thing I wanted to include in this office is a window showing the city the user had worked so hard to better.
The creation of this new office was the most simple as I essential reskinned the the original office. I brought lighter and more modern colours to the office and included that key window with a beautiful city in view.