Homing

Introduction

This is my individual Bachelor Project for Game and interaction design in Royal Danish Academy 2023. I studied for easier ways to access games, and meeting demand for more immersive entertainment, by applying diegetic methods and elements to approach navigation in video games. Diegetic elements refer to the elements that are natural to the game world itself. When building a game level, the use of diegetic elements can increase the diversity of information conveyed to players by the game and increase the player’s sense of substitution, while also guiding and helping players to establish a sense of direction. Therefore, I set my research question for: 

“How can I create a game environment with only diegetic methods and elements to guide players’ orientation?” 

I set  up  my project as a third-person 3D game without HUD and text prompt. The player rely on the elements and clues of the game world to determine the route to pass through the levels and wake up the souls of the three sharks.

Worldbuilding

In this fantasy world, countless giant trees grow in the water, and their root systems form land that provides habitats for countless creatures. A creature that looks like a shark but can fly in the air has established a symbiotic relationship with the giant trees. But one day, one of the trees died. Without the support of tree roots, the land was gradually submerged by water, and the sharks originally sheltered by the tree gradually died. Until a little girl reawakened the souls of these sharks and they brought back the life of the giant tree together.

More details on my website: Xinru Liu Fog - Homing (google.com)

Navigation Strategies

Researching the existing strategies from games led me to implement 6 types of navigation strategies with diegetic elements that could help the players finds out their position in the environment and plan their route in my game environment, which are: 

-Path: I used water as paths to connect the levels and floating particles to emphasize the direction.

-Weenies: The huge white tree in level.3 serves as reference points for players to find their position.

-Arena: I set the level. 3 inside a huge hollow tree, the players can not return after they entered, to keep the player focused on the exploration inside the area.

-Visual cue: I designed a dynamic visual cue as a glowing shark that floats in the mid-air. They will appear after the player touches the branch and fly toward the next goal.

-Light: I used different colors of light to shape the differentiations of each area, where the three shark skeletons were located, and used light to emphasize every entrance.

-Foreshadowing: I used cutscene or camera shift to directly show the goal to keep the player motivated.