[Semi-Sane] What is sane?

edited in Projects
[edit] tl;dr, scroll down to get the 2 minute prototype I made

soooooooo...

Here is a 'thing' for the monthly challenge. I wasn't too sure exactly what the monthly challenge was so I just spend the last 3 hours making a game (by far the fastest 'complete' game I've made). Next time I'll make something that more people can get involved in.

So the story of how this game came about was after a thinking about a sanity inducing or nullifying device (Sanity Amplification and Nullification Equipment (yay acronym))... that turned to an insanity inducing annoyance game but I think I read that someone was trying that already... I then fell asleep

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After a rather dark and terror-filled dream whereby I was attacked by a ghost, I (somehow) remembered this quote
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - attributed to Albert Einstein
So I wanted to make a game whereby the the user did the same thing over and over again, but because of changing environments the user would expect something different each time (but would essentially do the same thing every time).

First idea was to simply get the player to jump down a hole in level 1, then level 2 there would be spikes shooting across where the player needed to go (but they wouldn't actually kill the player and retract at the right time), then maybe a boulder to get the player to jump into it. The idea was in a very 10-mins after waking up state.

SPOILER: I've been told you must play the game first before reading this!
This got me thinking, why would this person be doing this over an over again, replaying it in their head. And so I finally decided to make a short game whereby the same scenario is played back but with progressively more revealing environments (this would also allow me to make one level and strip it down - yay reduced dev time!)

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It started as a sort of suicide story, whereby the player thinks they had a choice to jump, then they see that they were tricked into jumping or accidentally jumped, then they see that the they were actually forced. Which is what I imagine someone commuting suicide would feel like, it seems like an insane thing to do... to a 'sane' person at least
(disclaimer, I'm not nor have been a suicidal type, and I actually have little idea what it might actually so I hope I'm not insulting anyone... )


..and on that note here is the game (it only takes about 2 mins to complete):

PC download (Windows)
Unity Webplayer version

and a time lapse video of the the development (I only remembered to start screencapping 30 mins in of a 2h30m dev, so a lot of the interesting setting up steps are missing)

Time-lapse

Criticisms and comments are always welcome ^_^ but bear in mind I made this game very rapidly and it is just a throw away prototype (and I have not much time to spare for any more iterations over the next few weeks. This already subsumed way more that my hour a month ;p)

Comments

  • I like the idea space, particularly the concept of replaying a room that you steadily learn more about. :)

    On the narrative front, it may be stronger if you play with an emotion-space that you're more personally familiar with. Not through offensiveness or anything, but it's a fair be easier to provide a deeper and more genuine-feeling experience if you have more first-hand thoughts about it. :)
  • Werd! Yeah I've had a few conversations on the subject over my quarter-life, so I was drawing on that augmented by articles I've read and reflected on from experts and non-experts etc. But, yes, not a vast pool of personal experience, was just how it ended up after a frenzied 3 hour dev time :p but your point is taken and accepted! Many thanks

    As an irony, I made it on the first bright summer's day in a while. A happy Cape-Townian sunny summer's day was maybe not the ideal muse for a dark game, lol ;)
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