This week marks the start of the Easter holidays, giving me some extra time to work on my Fungus game and annotated level design. I have spent a good amount of time finishing up my dialogue for the final character The Critic, writing an epilogue, and generally going back through all of my writing to polish it and check for any spelling mistakes or general grammatical errors. The Critic’s dialogue was interesting to write as much of what they say is dependent on what the player has done up until that point. In its finished state, the script for the full game is close to 6000 words long. This has been a very big undertaking, and shown me just how much writing can go into branching dialogue, but overall, I am very happy with the finished script and the story as a whole. I am going to spend the next week implementing all of this dialogue in, playtesting and generally smoothing out the entire experience.

I have also created a simple menu (fig.1), featuring the title of the game (now called ‘A Soft and ‘Squishy Dungeon’), as well as ‘play’ and ‘quit’ buttons which will either load the player into the game or exit the application. The title was made in a similar monochromatic style to the rest of the game, to create a cohesive aesthetic feeling throughout. When initially implemented, the menu felt too static and I felt that it needed some motion to add some life to it. To achieve this I added a simple animator component to the image, which allowed me to make it bob slowly up and down.

(Above) Figure 1: Screenshot. The menu that greats the player when they load into the game.

Sound has now been implemented into the game. By going to freesound.com (Free Sound, 2021) I was able to download a number of royalty free .mp3 and .wav files to be used for background music and character speech. I now have a different sound for each character, as well as music pieces for both the menu and gameplay. Playing through the project now, I am struck with how much sound can help to bring a game to life; the navigational sections now have a richer atmosphere, and the characters have even more personality that extends past their presentation and writing. For future projects I may think about adding sound in at an earlier point in development, as it helps to better convey the ‘game-feel’ when playing through for testing.

Finally, I have added functionality in for the various stat variables within the game. If the player wishes to choose a response with a certain required stat, the flowchart will check whether they meet the correct requirements through ‘if’ and ‘else if’ commands. The response will also be greyed out and un-selectable if their stat is too low, giving some visual feedback that they do not meet the requirements to select it (fig. 2).

(Above) Figure 2: Screenshot. Dialogue choices with one option unavailable.

I have also begun preparing for the block-out of my level. While I can make basic shapes and structures, ProBuilder is not a tool that I am very comfortable with. Because of this, I have taken some time this week to follow along with some great tutorials, as well as the Unity Learn resources. A particularly helpful one that was recommended to me by a peer, took me through step-by-step construction of a house (Unity, 2018). I am now more confident with some of the terminology and tools available, such as extruding, mirroring, inserting edge loops, etc. While my level will look far from attractive, I hope that I will be able to get across my design intentions through a basic block out and communicated ideas in the document.

I have started my writing for the annotated piece too, spending some time going over and elaborating on the worldbuilding and quest design that I outlined last week. I hope that by covering these contextual aspects of the level in my submission, I will be able to better convey many of my design decisions. Next week I intend to playtest A Soft and Squishy Dungeon, and spend a considerable amount of time fleshing out my level design and its accompanying document.

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