Sunny
Uncovering the true feelings.
Role:
Game designer

Platform:
PC

Genre:
Text adventure / Survival game

Engine:
Unity

Sunny is a side view dialogue based game with
an experimental approach to the narration.
Lost in space on abandoned space station Harry, the explorer is left to fight for his life. His only companion is beautiful Sunny. Forced to survive together they form a strong bond in their relationship. Her support and attention allow Harry to go through all the challenges. But all that time his haunted imagination gave him no peace.

The base emotion of the concept is love and it's expressing:"I love you" —she lied.
Features
Platform⠀⠀
PC
Genre⠀⠀⠀⠀
Text adventure/
Survival game
Engine⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Unity
Interactive dialogue
Control the dialogue. Depending on your choices story will take a different direction.
Two main characters
Play for both Sunny or Harry. Decide how both of them will react to each other.
Survival
Survive in the critical situation of the space station.
Trailer
Development process
Initial idea
Are we capable of distinguishing real from unreal, or we are forever trapped in a knot of contradictory feelings? Sunny unravel the human nature in the most curious way.
First concept
Using one solid storyline but giving input from two different characters we can achieve new storyline experience without bringing new expensive technologies.
Task management
Development of the game core with
a whole team, the conceptual creation of the game through sketches, character/world building and main mechanics programming.
First build
Creation of alpha prototype including developed graphics assets and main mechanics. Active testing and bug searching.
Bug fixing
Solving bug problems that were found and twitching mechanics. Solving problems with a game flow and figuring out improvements based on a player's feedbacks.
Final build
Final testing followed by cutting down, polishing and simplifying final build in order to be presented as a final prototype result.
Next step
Returning to cut down mechanics,
More developed work with a text material, Expansion of the two characters input mechanic - more endings, more twists in the story.
Additional materials
Analysis for the game concept
Direction
The best way to deliver the emotion and storyline base is to go in the direction of a storytelling game. This way we will be able to deliver the needed narrative direction and be personal to the player.

Storytelling games
According to the definition "A storytelling game is a game where two or more persons collaborate on telling a spontaneous story." We can see a lot of examples of story-driven games where you have the different amount of control over what you can have on a story itself. As we can assume its all about right balance between story and the game mechanic that delivers that story.

How to improve the existing storytelling experience?

If we will briefly look at the market and analyse offers of story-driven experiences we will realise that there are not a lot of good examples of a collaborative story in singleplayer games. Yes players have a choice and different angles but its all made from a single perspective, the player basically interacts with the already made story, where all choices are made in. My idea was to improve it and still keep it technically possible to realise in a small project.
Project Idea
My idea was to put a player in a perspective of two characters and tell him a story from both sides of a conversation between them. Using one solid storyline but giving input from two different sides we can achieve new storyline experience without bringing new expensive technologies.

In order to create a space for such mechanic, I decided to put both characters in one isolated space. Following our base oneliner, I decided on a male and female character. In order to create an interesting space to explore relationships between them, I chose a space station as an environment. To explore where this set up can go I compiled a simple ripomatic and explored book materials that I can use in this project.
In-depth project description
Description
Sunny is a survival text adventure. In sunny main character wakes up at the abandoned and forgotten space station. By exploration, he founds out that he is not alone and there is also woman astronaut Sunny. He starts to work together with her in order to rebuild and repair station. During their collaborative work protagonist fell in love with Sunny and start a relationship with her. If a player manages to survive until the end he discovers that sunny is an android programmed to save human life at any cost, in this case - to develop fake relationship so alone astronaut will maintain healthy not only physically but also mentally. In our Game build, we give a slice from the middle of a game/story. This allows us to show main mechanics and give an interesting part of the story for the cost of the tutorial level.

Target audience
Our target audience is two groups of players, text adventure gamers
and dating simulators gamers.
-We hit the text adventure audience with our main mechanic, which is dialogue system.
All other graphics support and sub-mechanics aim to support dialogue. Player choices
affect the story and ending.
-We hit the audience of dating simulator lovers with our story and player impact on it.
We give player unique possibility to build a relationship from both sides, giving control
of a Harry and Sunny answers.

Unique selling points
Unique selling points of Sunny are the combination of mechanics that are not
allowed to simply and effectively tell the story but also give us the possibility to evoke the
feeling in the player, by giving him a possibility to build relationships himself.

We are hitting two target audiences of people, rest is story driven game lovers and
second are people who into relationship simulators. This is a great possibility not only to
expand our possible audience but also to bring something new to players.
Indepth mechanics description
The main game mechanic is the interactive dialogue. Player has always two choices
in the dialogue and also branched dialogue system can manage player to go on his own
path.

First sub game mechanic is Emotional expression depending on what choice player
choose and what is the answer.

Second sub mechanic is Badge system, which was unfortunately cut down in half
for the cost of production.

Third sub mechanic is quick time events. Sometimes a player will have to switch his
focus from the dialogue and quickly press the right button.

The last mechanic is death/punishment mechanic. Each time player choice leads
the character to die player will be dropped few steps back in his progression and will have
to make his decisions again.
Daniil Khokhonov
Game design/Project management

daniilkhokho@gmail.com
Cologne, Germany
Made on
Tilda