Town Adventure

Design done by Joseph Poselenzny.

In this project, created in Bitsy, you explore a town, but something isn't quite right...

*spoilers*

https://upfmissions.org/ubts/ubts-response-to-crisis-in-ukraine/

This haunting story from the Russo-Ukrainian War and others like it inspired me to make this game. I wanted to avoid telling a specific story that wasn't mine to tell and focus on showing the tragedy that connects all wars.

In this project, I use ludonarrative dissonance and ludonarrative harmony to paint a picture of a town caught in the middle of a war. The player, the bullet shot out of a gun, collects points as they wrack up civilian casualties. I use the disconnect between the human instinct to get more points and the regret once the player realizes what they have done, or what they are doing, to convey a message. Meanwhile, when the bullet finally reaches an "enemy" soldier, the game ends just as another life is ended. Also note how the bullet becomes redder with each room of victims.

A soldier can only follow the orders as they are given, just as a player can only work within the game's constraints if they want to win. This is why I make many casualties inevitable in this game, just as casualties are inevitable in real-life wars. Even when the player is given the choice to go to the school or the neighborhood, they end up leaving a trail of death behind them either way. The final area of the game mirrors the area that you started in, showing that the opposing soldier is just like the one who fired the bullet that the player controls. Throughout the project I also show how different sources twist narratives for their own benefit.

This game was made in the Bitsy game creator, which has many constraints. As such, I had to adapt to its capabilities. For example, while Bitsy calls NPCs "sprites," the NPCs in this game are classified as "items" because I needed them to change or disappear when interacted with, a functionality which is not available for sprites. However, this fits with the idea that these casualties are not actually taken into account when wars are started (humans are just items to be used). I used a variable to track the number of deaths that the player caused which are then recounted to them at the end of the game. Bitsy also has several advanced dialog options. In this project, I used the advanced dialog option called Cycle. It recounts a list of dialog options and then starts back at the top. I used this to simulate the experience of scrolling through TV channels and not finding anything good to watch, ending up back at the channel you started with. Ridiculous TV programs are constrasted with the harshness of nonfiction channels relating to the TV watcher's reality.

https://upfmissions.org/ubts/ubts-response-to-crisis-in-ukraine/

Check out my GitHub: https://github.com/fatjosephina

Or let me know what you think in the comments down below.