Fall in love simulation
About Inferis
DigiPen DES356 Class
Year: 2020
Team: Individual Project
Engine: Unity engine
Project Concept
Inferis is a Kinesthetic design project focusing on creating a functional environment and UI for a 3D simulation game.
Game high concept
Fall in love is a first-person exploration game where players take a role of a high school girl who will go through their first time experiencing love. In this game, players will experience the moment of falling in love at first sight with a ‘sempai’ (Japanise for school seniors) in the spring.
Game Spec Overview
GAME ENGINE: Unity engine version 2020.1.4f1
GAME TYPE: 1st person exploration
GENRE: Realistic, Shojo manga
MOOD: Dreamy, realistic, young/school-life (Asian country)
ART STYLE: Cartoony, Japanese Anime, Gritty realism
MUSIC/SFX STYLE: Dreamy, magical
Kinesthetic Flow Concept
Keywords
Dreamy/Lovely
Fuzzy (Butterfly in your stomach)
Excitement
Summary
In fall in love, we will be focusing on emulating the experience of how falling in love feels like. Got a butterfly in your stomachs. The thing around them was blur like the whole world is only two of them, the heart that beats so fast it's felt like it's going to burst. By paying attention to camera angle and light effect, we can create the aesthetics that mimic the feeling of falling in love moment in the dreamy and fuzzy part. Using sound effects, background music, and particle effects of building up tension and excitement.
Player Movement/Controller
In a normal state player controller, it should be straightforward, and just like any other RPG game, I want the player to feel comfortable just walking around the world with the default movement. I want to keep it very small for the kinesthetic element because changing movement speed or control might pull players out from the current flow of their experience.
Kinesthetic Element 1 – Slow down
Slow down is the element that happens in the story when the player is nearly out of stamina, and the world element starts to look slower as well as player movement.
Kinesthetic Element 2 – Ba-dum
When the player screen turns pink, and the heartbeat sound effect was played, the controller will start shaking/ rumble.
Camera
Kinesthetic Element 1 – Blur vision
When the player is nearly low stamina, they will first experience the blur on their vision created with a post-processing effect.
Kinesthetic Element 2 – Shaking
As the player nearly pass-out the camera will start to shake faster and faster.
Audio
Audio will contain 2 main types of sound effect feedback: an interactable sound effect corresponding to player control and the situational sound effect corresponding to the heart effects. The game will also have background music and ambient, aiming to give players a sense of reality and build up emotion in each scenario.
Kinesthetic Element 1 – Surface sound feedback
Surface sound feedback change depends on what surface the player is walking over: hard surface, wet surface, and soft surface.
Kinesthetic Element 2 – Ba-Dum sound effect
This sound effect triggers when the player is within the area of ‘Sempai’ to simulate the heartbeat you get when you are in a very nervous situation like standing near your crush. And around the time before pass out to simulate the exhaustion of the player.
Kinesthetic Element 3 – Background music & ambiance
Depending on the situation player is in, the background music will change to match the emotion player is meant to feel.
Visuals
Just like how the Yandere simulator uses the camera effect to represent the emotion of the main characters, my game also contains many camera filters using post-processing effects to switch between each emotion.
Kinesthetic Element 1 – Grayscale
This kinesthetic element is used mainly to portrayed negative emotions such as heartbreak, fear, or exhaustion.
Kinesthetic Element 2 – Sakura particles
Sakura particle effects are an environmental effect meant to give the world dreaming and lively aesthetics, just like a dust particle in many games.
Kinesthetic Element 3 – Pink filter
This kinesthetic element is used mainly to portrayed positive emotions such as falling in love.
Kinesthetic Element 4 – Heart particles
This particle effect is corresponding to the heartbeat sound and the rumble controller. This effect happens when the player is nearby ‘Sempai.’
Research & Reference
Yandere simulator
Yandere simulator is an RPG game where the player is playing as a high school girl who falls in love with this boy, but with her mental complex, she has a very aggressive way of showing her love and taking care of her competitor. This game has a very traditional Japanese art style (anime) and contains a lot of violence.
I chose this game because it has very great camera effects that help emphasize the characters’ complex emotions, making it easier for players to understand what our character is feeling right now. What interests me about this game is that this camera effect is good enough to deliver a very complex emotion that, most of the time, we don't usually feel daily.
Genshin Impact
Genshin Impact is a hack and slashes open-world RPG game with a very stylized Asian itch-ish art style. What interests me about this game is that almost everything in the environment is intractable and always gives feedback to the player no matter what. These small details would help the player if you attached to the game, and with a lot of animation, every action player did feel very smooth and real.
Dishonored 2
Dishonored 2 is a first-person combat game with many kinesthetic elements on camera while the player focuses on the target or when the player moves. I'm using Dishonored 2 as my final marketing research because even though the game genre was the opposite of my game, the camera effect can be used as a good reference to my game. this camera effect will help increase tension and excitement for the player during the short amount of time that the effects have been called
