Hatching Misery

Hatching Misery was a project created in my second year of university as my second studio prject. For this project, we were required to design a game that makes the player experience an emotion. The emotion our group chose was “Hurt”. Our game has the player taking control of a mother hen on a farm, trying to defend a clutch of chicks from encroaching hawks. The player needs to lead the chicks around a farmstead, using shelter as cover from attacks, to find food for her chicks. If the chicks are fed enough during the day, they survive the night. If not, they die during the night.  For Hatching Misery we wanted to subvert the players expectations by creating a cartoony, kids game, aesthetic. By that I mean bright saturated colours, simple shapes, and bright happy music. Then when the player loses their first chick, and hears the scream, they’ll realise what kind of game they’re playing.

For this project I signed up to be the project manager as I wanted to have experience leading people in a project and was really wishing to push myself because of this as it is something I'm not usually comfortable with. As I learned a decent way into the project I am an awful project manager. I do not have the willpower or attitude towards managing people on a project as I do towards creating things for the project. For most of the project I was more concerned about not coming across as a jerk and making sure everyone wasn't being overwhelmed by the work I was handing out. This ended up in people who were only somewhat attached to the project not completing tasks and a huge blow up within the group because of my mis-management. Although I feel like the project had the most rocky production out of all projects that i have worked on i feel like it was the one i learnt the most doing, I was constantly failing in my role as a project manager in the process learning how the role should be tackled, while also excelling in the areas where i got to be creative solidifying myself as a narrative designer. Although the production was really rock i feel like we still came out the end with a really solid game that i am super proud of.

The thing I am the most proud of with this project is that I had an idea for a companion piece for the game, a printed story book that people could colour in at exhibition. As the game was a bait and switch game, one that appeared innocent but turned sinister I thought this was a neat way to sell this idea further. The story book tells the events that occur just before the game begins and on the surface look innocent but there are constant details in the background of the images that allude to the real narrative of the game. I wrote the story for the book as well as detailed the drawings for the illustrator to make a reality and it's what really solidified my speciality in narrative to me.