I’ll be here.

I’ll be here is an interactive memory that captures a moment of being there for a friend. It uses just one button as the input, but the varied effort put forth on that single button is used to re-create a sense of uncertainty and anxiety. I’ll be here was created to narratively compliment Emperatriz Ung’s “On A Cloudy Day.”

I’ll be here is a 10-hour prototype made for the NYU Game Center’s “Prototype Studio” course, where we made a game prototype every week based on a set of constraints provided by the instructor. I integrated Ink with Unity and set up the script to handle state changes from simple tags within the narrative itself, making the process of writing and directing the actions totally seamless and easy to adjust on the fly.

Alternative Controls

The prototyping constraint from the class was for two individual prototypes to interact with each other. Beyond simply having complimentary narratives, Emperatriz and I chose to make our two games interact in a more tangible way for our in-class presentation. Both games use just one input, so we replaced all gameplay inputs with a touch-based human circuit. To play one game, you have to touch the hand of the person playing the other game. The length of the games are very similar, and the timelines line up in such a way that each player is experiencing the story at similar times, each from two very different perspectives. This physical interaction enhances the emotional experience of both games.