Just Another Day
One of the modules in the undergrad program at DSK Supinfogame, required us to create a serious game on two given topics, one being Women Harassment. We produced this project over a period of 2 months.
Topic & Role
Highlights of the project:​ Serious Game, Visual Novel
Team Size: 4
Past Time Adventures - Trailer
Just Another Day is a serious game that covers a dark topic called Women Harassment. You live the life of a regular woman in India, who has to not only deal with harassers on the way to her work but also come back to a very unsupportive family.
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Lead the team and manage communications.
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Develop GDD, Flow and Dialogues.
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Scenario creation, asset list management.
Tools used: Unity, MS Word, MS Powerpoint, Draw.io, Photoshop, Illustrator
Research
Harassment comes in various forms, and happens too frequently, especially in India. The reason this topic was chosen for the Serious Game Project, is because although there is a lot of awareness about the issue, no one ever talks about the emotional breakdown the victims go through. Some forms of harassment, specially coming from the family members/close ones, are simply neglected, because it has been normalized.
Games being a good medium nowadays to spread messages, is the best way we can let players know and experience the trauma.
Design Process
Since our team comprised of only 4 game designers, we each decided to split the work, and almost worked towards each area, including programming, art, UI and designing.
My word, besides team management, included overlooking major designing work. We started our work with deciding the message we wanted to convey to our audiences, which was - "What women feel upon being harassed". Once this was decided, we then moved on to the kind of game genre that would best fit this theme. A visual novel seemed the right genre since it gave us a means to convey our story both through the player's side and NPC's side.
The game was heavily choice based, I decided a consequence system needed to be implemented, and hence a "Morale" system was implemented, so that players could be made aware of their choices. This morale system made the character more humanly and not just a game character.
A simple travel system through a 2D interactive map was also implemented, through which we wanted the players to live through the action of avoiding creeps and reaching their destination, besides the usual dialogues and choices. As the players would opt to take newer paths to complete quests, such as reaching office or home, they were bound to discover more shady and secretive areas, that aren't usually safe.
Glimpses of the game are showcased below.
