The Sun Also Rises

This was a project that I worked on from 2014-2016, primarily with August Early and a small rotating team of artists. The plan was to release a commercial game, but due to the collapse of OUYA and other promised funding sources, we were forced to cancel the project. 
Here I have recorded a collection of artwork, assets, and a brief postmortem of some of the completed systems I built. 
CONCEPT

The project centered around characters who served in the US Army in Afghanistan, as well as intelligence officers who lived in and around Washington, DC. 
We always wanted to use highly stylized, colorful characters and environments, but the ultimate look of the project is defined by the limited technical budget of the OUYA console.
ENVIRONMENTS
During the course of the project, the environments became more stylized and integrated into graphic and UI elements.
Settings for the story included rural Afghanistan, CIA headquarters, and some areas of New York City.

A scene near the 'qualat' wall in an Afghan village

An incomplete scene of a Forward Operating Base on a cliffside

CHARACTERS

Without the technical budget for much surface detail, body language is important to convey character's emotional states. 

Three military characters arranged in a scene in Unity

Characters models are flexible with a variety of clothing and gear that can be added or removed for each scene context

SYSTEMS
For this game I built a bespoke dialogue system and a visual scripting backend for Unity. This system was unique because dialogue trees were only partially driven by players choosing between different dialogue choices. Every scene actor carried an internal model of their emotional state, and the meaning of dialogue choices changed based on the emotions of the speaking character. 

Animated character dialogue bubbles were kept on screen to help players keep track of changing character states and information. Scrolling let players review an entire conversation. 

At the bottom of the screen is an abstracted "path" of choices and emotional state changes. Each choice can carry emotional weight, changing the color of the path and the outcome. 

During conversation, the player character's emotional state changes, blocking some paths and changing the possibility space. 

A late experiment in adding more visual clarity to the UX

By the end of the project, several in-progress chapters demonstrated that that the system had interesting utility to make thoughtful open-ended puzzles and character interactions. Unfortunately there was not an opportunity to expand and refine these ideas. 
↑Back to Top