I was the Narrative Designer for this project. On our Kanban board, I wrote down that I needed to put in 10 1/2 hours, and I'd say that it did take me around that long to fully work on the game. Because of my role, I worked on making the story, and giving the level designers a theme to work with when it came to the game, along with the actual story bits that the game had. Narrative storytelling had a big part in this game sense it was so small, so what bits and pieces I was able to put in was nice. The game had a few different concept stories before we landed on our final one. Here they are!

Concept Ideas:

The player finds themselves trapped in a factory that, while looking abandoned, seems to still be in a functional state. Attempting to find their way out of the factory, they will find that the factory itself seems to try to prevent the player from leaving. Something about the actual factory is seemingly trying to hold the player hostage.

The player is a new security guard for an old factory after the owner apparently shut it down. On their first night at the job, the player finds themselves locked inside the factory, with no way out. Traversing the factory, they must find an escape to the factory and confront the owner who put him up to this.

The player wakes up in some strange factory that doesn’t seem to have anyone else in it, yet still has basic functions like electricity, and running machines. They don’t know why they’re there, but they want to try and find some answers as to who brought them here, and why they are stuck in this factory. They set off to explore and escape this place, while hoping there isn’t something malicious trying to hurt them in the factory. 

We ended up going with the second idea, and rolled with it because we wanted to have some fun storytelling elements. With more time, we would've even gotten to do so much more to add more personality to the game. The following is the synopsis I gave to everyone for the story.

You are playing as a Security Guard for an old factory. The factory was shut down years ago, at least according to the owner of the factory. You find yourself in your Security office that overlooks the entire factory to try and keep watch. It’s implied that you turn  on a switch or button to turn on the power to the factory so you can overlook it. However this is just supposed to be the lights that turn on, nothing else is supposed to be on. To your surprise, you see machines starting to work on their own in the factory. You set off outside the office to look for the item. You start having to work on actual puzzles to start off, while finding oddities at the factory. Over the course of the factory exploration, you find small notes that lead to some clues as to what’s happening in the factory itself. 

When it came to the notes, they all only have one version of them, and I brought them all up in their own text boxes.

Security Office Note:

“Hello Mr. Security guard, this is your boss. I understand that everything here may seem a tad bit confusing to understand at first glance, but trust me when I say that this job really isn’t too hard. Just relax and don’t worry about things too much. Remember, I don’t pay you to think too hard, I just pay you to keep the place secure!

• Sincerely, Boss”

Conveyor Belt room:

“To the poor schmuck that finds this before the boss does, I’d actively try to leave this job before the boss tries to tempt you with his “Raises” as they’re nothing but a contractual lie. He wants nothing more than to see you suffer here. Which is strange, because this place isn’t actually making any useful products. So.. leave while you can.

• From: Larry”

Hydraulic Press Area:

“To the Lousy ninny that found these notes, I’d suggest that you hightail it outta here. The boss is nothin’ but trouble for everyone but him. He started working on these weird things called Organic Machines. Something about trying to give them a more natural feel or something, but it’s costing the jobs of our workers.

• From: Larry”

Exit Room Area:

“To the… oh screw it, why even write these notes actin’ like I’m some top of the line crap. Whoever you are, get out now. The factory is not worth your time anymore. I think the boss is trying to focus on these Organic Machines, but I worry that he’s using unethical means to get that done. Don’t become a statistic, just leave.

• Larry”

The most difficult part of this project, and the things that kept me from giving my full vision, was time, and Github being a pain with unreal. Unreal had a lot of issues with our project linking to github, and that combined with the limited amount of time on our project made it so that when we had to actually crunch time and put everything together, I couldn't give my full wants into the game. I had to just make story, and hope everything else went well. But it was still doable, and we made a lovely project none the less!

I think from this, I learned that managing time well, and communicating issues is a key factor in making sure we can have enough time to work on what we need to. Our team was wonderful at communicating with one another, and we did well making sure we could try and work through any problems that was thrown our way. Granted, we needed to make sure that Github worked with Unreal a lot, and understanding that we had to delete items from github so it would show up on Unreal was quite strange. 

I am very proud that I was able to help work on the story, the lore, and even influence the narrative storytelling aspect of the world we made with just my synopsis for the story. I'd actually really love to keep working on the project in our off time to try and make a full game on a bigger scale, but with the time we had, this was a wonderful product.