Anesthesia
Narrative Designer - 3D Puzzle Game
Team Giga Grunts (17 people) - 7 months
Team Giga Grunts (17 people) - 7 months
After working with the Giga Grunts team on DimLight Dungeon, I was quite excited to start a new project with them, to bring my voice to the table and work with the team from the start. As such, I participated with enthusiasm in brainstorming ideas for our next project, and helped to weave the best parts of our concepts together to develop what would become Anesthesia. In this concept, our team sought to create more than just another hospital-set horror game, blending disparate elements - panic and puzzles, shadow and neon, youth and death, stark reality and surreal fantasy - into a distinctive experience which would have players hearts and minds racing. Developing the game's characters and script, I leaned into the setting and theme of contrast to create a story exploring trauma and recovery, the fear, hope, anger, and empathy of someone whose survival has been uncertain long before their current predicament. Alongside the rest of the team, I worked on:
- Developing the player character Jennie, as well as the antagonist and side characters
- Writing a 15-page script and implementing dialogue into play
- Assisting with level and gameplay design to match the arc of story and interaction
- Designing the tutorial to teach players mechanics in an engaging, fluid fashion
- Helping to draft and implement the Resonance system which guides players through the environment
- Working with artists and sound designers to develop the look, sound, and behavior of characters and environments
- Running 20 total playtests of assets and game interactions, and reporting user feedback to guide development efforts
If we'd had more time with the project, I'd have liked to spend more time with the story and scripted events, bringing greater depth to players' actions and observations. There are certain elements of the story - Jennie's anger at her situation and herself, the monster's behaviors and motivations, the relationship between them and their environment - that, due to time and technical constraints, weren't brought to the screen as fully as I'd hoped. All in all, though, I'm proud of my and my team's achievements with this project - we did what we set out to do and then some, creating a spooky, heartfelt, delicious blend of contradictions.
Content Warning: Child endangerment, fantasy violence, medical imagery, surreal setting and content
Logo by Xiaowan Ma