Focus

Focus was created as my capstone project in my last year at uni. Focus is a 3D narrative puzzle game that involves the player character ‘Savannah’ returning to her childhood home and packing it up. While she is doing this she finds significant items of her past which trigger memories about her and her dad which are watched through the eyes of Savannah. These memories will range from Savannah being a child to her in her adult life, giving the player a deep look into the life and growth of Savannah. Savannah's father was a puzzle box collector and kept some of his most precious items in them meaning the player will have to work out how to open them in order to witness the memories. Although not all memory items are found in these puzzle boxes some are just littered around the house, the player will be able to pick up most memories in any order. All except the first and the last memory, the first memory will be forced on the player when they start the game and the last memory which will be locked off until all others are collected. This last memory will also reveal the meaning of the game, the reason that Savannah is packing up her childhood home, it’s because her father has died. The whole game will be about building the complicated relationship between Savannah and her father, before revealing the tragic ending.

The ending although bitter has a sweet twist to it, the father is associated with the tree in the backyard of the house. The tree is used as a narrative motif throughout the game, at the start of the game the father tells a young savannah about how the tree is a giant creature that wishes to explore the world but instead chooses to sit in the backyard to watch over young savannah. Once the final memory is obtained the player hears the sound of large movement, when the player looks out the window they can no longer see the tree to represent how the father after death is now able to free knowing that he no longer needs to look after Savannah.

For this project I was the lead designer as it was my concept and had recruited most of the team myself. My responsibilities for this project were most of the game design elements as we had an extremely small team with me being the only designer on the project, this included narrative design, puzzle design, level design among other tasks that needed to be done with no one to fill the role. The project was not smooth sailing to say the least, a few weeks out from submission our project manager due to personal reasons had to step away from the project for the final weeks. This left me in not only the lead designer role trying to fulfill everything that came with that role but also having to pick up all of the responsibilities of the project manager role for the final weeks. This led to me overworking myself for several weeks trying to fulfil both roles in order to finish this project. It was also my design, my pitch, my baby I wanted it  to be a polished as possible which lead me to working at a rate that was impossible to keep up with for longer than what i did. It was a hard lesson but i learnt about the importance of not overworking as after it was all over i realised that if i had gone any longer i would have broken down from overwork. But overall I'm really proud of the game we created, It wasn't exactly how i envisioned it but people who played it really enjoyed it and there was nothing but positive feedback besides the bug that would make the game unplayable.