COURIER

Solo Project
Made in Unity

This was the final project for an Interactive Narrative class I took in Spring 2022, making it my last major narrative project towards my minor. The game is a very simple exploration game about an unnamed character delivering letters in an empty post-apocalypic city. From a narrative angle I wanted to use the setting to explore themes like loneliness and purpose, as well as focus on the worldbuilding of the mysterious and somewhat surreal setting. Capstone being ongoing at the same time made this a difficult project to work on, and since I'm far from a programmer and artist, it's a bit rusty in a handful of places, but the narrative is the most important aspect here, and I'm fairly proud of my work here.

As it stands I consider this a bit of a prototype for a game I would certainly like to fully make at some point in the future, and have some plans on how I would go about doing that.

In continuing this project there are a lot of changes and expansions I would want to make. First I want to change up the gameplay loop quite a bit. Right now, you explore the single level picking up glowing letters and delivering them to mailboxes glowing the same color. This was simple to set up for a short project where gameplay wasn't a priority, but the giant glowing letters breaks the atmosphere and immersion I want to create.

In the future I would change this so entering a level gives you a few letters with symbols that correspond to a certain mailbox somewhere in the area. Additional letters could even be picked up through more natural ways like finding them on desks or attached to notes. The other major change is giving the game a semi open world to heighten the exploration factor. How I think this would work is each level is a district or neighborhood of the city that connects to others through gates. I want the player to be able to come and go between districts, and have to travel between them frequently for new letters or places to explore. This means each one will have to be interesting, fun to explore, and distinct.