Howdy! I'm Patricio Blasetti.

I'm the Narrative Designer, my main role is responsible for crafting the story, dialogue, and character development. Working closely with game designers, artists, programmers, and audio designers to ensure the narrative is effectively integrated into the gameplay and game world.

We only had 3 weeks to make the game, our game designer had the idea of making a platformer. We started brainstorming about where we would make the game, what the objective would be, and who our character would be. I originally thought I would do around 20 or 25 hours. I did around 15 or 12 hours.

Narrative Design:

Initial Idea

After discussing ideas, we decided that the character would be a chicken that lives on a farm and must retrieve her eggs. A simple and reasonable objective for the narrative. Originally, it was discussed that the chicken had to face different enemies such as wolves, rats, and lizards. After the exchange of ideas, we agreed that it should be a small animal so the chicken could crush it as part of its mechanics. Wolves were too big so they were ruled out, rats were very common and lizards were not mentioned again. We stuck with raccoons. Being realistic because they tend to be common predators of chickens.

Location and enemies

When discussing the location, it occurred to me that the tutorial could be in the barn and progress to a second level on a river, but the idea had to be discarded because creating more than one level would be too much for the short time. It was decided to focus the game on something small but polished. A game with good quality mechanics and long enough to enjoy the single level. The barn was kept as the only level and it would have ups and downs to try to get the stolen eggs. Around the level there are raccoons that will attack you if they detect you within their radius. Being a chicken, its abilities focused on jumping and gliding, being able to bounce when falling.

Story/narrative/objective

After many ideas and recommendations, the characters, place, objective and story were chosen. 

Rocky the Roster is a rooster who lives on the Golden Ginger Farm. A careless and lazy Roster whose routine usually involves retrieving his eggs. This time the narrator wants to introduce Rocky but finds himself in the situation that he can't find him. When he finally finds him he is fighting with the gang of raccoons. After several crashes the raccoons manage to steal the eggs and go out to the barn yard. In the end he encourages Rocky to go and retrieve the eggs. While the narrator waits in an awkward silence.

Work outside my role

Since my role was short, I eventually focused on helping others in a different way. 

Music

For music, I found some royalty free music for the main menu and narration.

I also came up with the idea of implementing a harmonica music when losing the game with a sad melody. Like the one used in Red Dead Redemption 1.

VFX

I created two special effects which are used on the character blueprints when they are eliminated. One is an explosion that occurs when the pigs are crushed by Rocky. The blueprint will display a rapid generation of smoke at the position where the pig was eliminated. This has the ability to generate random shapes so the smoke pattern does not repeat. This are the two are most proud of making.

I worked on a second effector which causes Rocky to create an explosion of feathers at the location where he was eliminated when eliminated. This is implemented within the character blueprint.

Widget

To introduce the player to the game's story, we came up with the idea of creating a narration at the beginning of the game. This would be an audio with text explaining what the story is about and the objective.

First I created a script with the information of the characters, the place and the objective.

Narrator: This is Golden Ginger farm. Home of Rocky Roster.

Where is it?

Music plays

Not again

Agitated chicken cackling

Rocky has 3 eggs but lately he has had problems with "Thieves".

*Crash sound

Those dirty fast fingers raccoons have done it again.

*Crash sound

They jumped the fence and stole all the eggs.

Come on Rocky! Go get them back!

I'll just stay here (awkward silence) waiting.

For this I recorded myself as a narrator who wants to introduce Rocky but can't find him. This one is looking for and finding Rocky fighting the raccoons. After the narration, look for special effects like rooster sounds, classic cartoon crash sounds, music and more.

Finally, I created a widget that would be applied within the menu blueprint. This would start the menu and continue when you hit start. Starting the narration and displaying the narrated text. I feel this was the hardest think of all the project. I was looking for free royalty effects and music.

Trailer

One of my last contribution was creating a trailer for the game