Picture of Franco Eduardo Aguilera Pacho

Franco Eduardo Aguilera Pacho

Narrative Designer / Game Writer

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ECHOES IN THE VOID

  • Genre: Sci - Fi.
  • Type: Text Based Game.
  • Tools: Excel, Arcweave, PowerPoint.
  • Duration: 72 Hour Gamejam.
  • Role: Narrative Designer, Writer, Game Designer.
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    Goal.

    • Develop a text based game in 72 hours for the SIG GameJam using Arcweave, with the theme of “resilence”.
    • Achieve a compelling aesthetic with minimal assets, managing time and resources efficently as soloDev.
    • Design the game around Arcweave limitations, using outside information to decipher the game’s puzzles.
    • Balance a narrative in 2nd person with console speak, giving player information through a limited form of storytelling.

    Overview

    Narrative Design
    Narrative Design
    Puzzle Design
    Puzzle Design
    Visual - Narrative Integration
    Visual - Narrative Integration
    Accolades and Nominations
    Accolades and Nominations

    Narrative Design

    Design Directives

    I designed my entry as a text based puzzle game, with  small choices that added extra immersion to the experience.

    • Theme relevant: Puzzles that push the player into a state of resilence, solving objectives that moves them out of the comfort of the game screen.  
    • Minimal information: Capture the attention of the player with vital information on minimal word count, avoiding passive reading wall of texts.
    • Gameplay pacing: Using the narrative and moment-to-moment experience to present tutorials and puzzles that fit into the narrative curve of the game.
     

    Storytelling

    The game story takes place immediately after the catastrophic accident of a scientific spacecraft.

    Playing as the lone survivor of the accident, your mission is to send a distress signal hoping to get rescued. 

    Clear Story: presented in the form of terminals scattered throughout the wreckage of the spacecraft.

    Smart worldbuilding: with sound and text, the game cretes a clear atmosphere: one of urgency and survivorship.

     

    Inspo1
    Inspo2

    Puzzle Design

    The first puzzle serves as a tutorial for the game, teaching players the main mechanic.

    • Watch the image displayed.
    • Gather information from it.
    • Use outside resources to solve it.

    The point was to use Arcweave for the logic an basic CSS only. The game relied on the player real world knowledge and ease of access to the internet to resolve the puzzles showed in-game

     

    The second puzzle relies on inference and decoding.
    The player must find the correct door to power on. 
    • Decode morse code, each signal has information about the origin.
    • Read terminals to deduce the location described in the morse code signals.

    Player has 2 opportunities, failing to solve it results in game over.


    The third and last puzzle is the most complex of the three.

    It requires for the player to input the correct sequence of 5 color coded buttons.

    I made sure that they can’t fluke the answer, pushing the players to engage with the puzzle or else result in a game over.

    playing with the aesthethic of limited green color. the player  has to

    • Decode  from morse or hexadecimal cryptic message
    • Input the sequence in the correct order.

    Visual - Narrative Integration

    Atmosphere for immersion

    As a solo dev, with limited time I made sure to make use of free available resources.

    I used free stock images and audio to quickly create the game’s atmosphere.

    • Visuals: Turned images into ASCII art to create an illusion of a console showing imagery limited by kernel level computing.
    • Sound: Morse code converters and online ambience sounds create the urgency of a doomed spacecraft with distress signals looping on the background.

    Integration in Puzzles

    inspo 4.png
    Inspo5

    This puzzles were heavily inspired by Fallout  terminal minigame. Each puzzle was designed like a security override, or emergency systems on the ship.

    Puzzles often contained two layers.

    • The information gathered through solving a code.
    • The information given by the Terminal Data.

    An interactive experience matching the game aesthetic, with the limitations of team size, time, and tools available.

    Accolades

    The game gathered enough praise from community and critics to rank among the top 10 out of 120 entries.

    • Rank #8th in Critcs Vote. 7,60 rating

    “made me feel like a suffocating crew member struggling with tasks I usually find basic.”
    -Chride, ND and SIG GameJam Coordinator

    • Ranked #11 in Community Vote

    #5 in gameplay, #20 in storytelling, #28 in theme interpretation. 

    • Nominated for Excellence in Narrative Design.

    A recognition to the most creative narrative designed with interactivity in mind.

     

    #8 out of 120 entries!
    Nominated for Excellence in ND
    #11 Community Vote on SIG ArcJam
    Accolade2

    THANKS FOR CHECKING OUT THE PROJECT!

    So shout, and let the echo be your final act of revelry.

    -IDIL, Ship AI.