N3-VR

N3-VR (pronounced “Never”) is a first-person puzzle game that is intended to be narratively driven. It was made for the Global Game Jam 2022 in less than 10 days as a way to highlight the skills of our really large team.

My main involvement in this project was the narrative script, the worldbuilding, and the level design for the central hub and corridors.

You play as Little Drone who wakes up at the bridge of a derelict frigate called Pan’s Flight. It is driven by the purpose to wake the ship’s human crew up from cryosleep but is also harassed by the ship’s on-board AI, WENDEE.

My main objective when writing the story was to create an AI character that was almost eldritch. She has spent an unknown amount of time adrift in space, trapped with her own thoughts and the knowledge that she is carrying a ship full of humans who do not deserve her compassion. On the other hand, she is designed to be a mother, therefore she must offer compassion.

While watching Little Drone, WENDEE struggles to justify her actions. It appears as though she is appealing to Little Drone, but in fact, she is trying to convince herself that the decision to scuttle the ship and doom the crew to death was the right thing to do.

For the game design, I created and helped maintain a wiki that contained all the intentions for the mechanics and levels we wanted to see in the game. If you click the link below, you can see all the character and location sketches I have written, as well as the additional design information written by the other collaborators on the project.

Again, my focus was on the worldbuilding. Having two great voice actors read out my lines was a fantastic way to make sure the world felt real. Physically, we created drone models that could be posed like dolls. I went around the entire game world and peppered these in different places, trying to do some environmental storytelling. WENDEE commanded the drones to destroy the ship and then destroy themselves, but did not tell the drones how to do that. As such, the drones apparently descended into a Lord of Flies style state of nature. Some drones became the killers while others became the sacrifices. You can even see some drones worshipping others and perhaps even WENDEE.

Overall, as a game, I think N3-VR is not very all that exciting. It’s a walking simulator with some puzzles. However, while I am no longer fully implicated in the project, the team continues to work on it and are planning on publishing updates.

But, I do think that my script is good and that the voice acting in the game is really, really strong. This disconnect between gameplay and narrative, however, taught me the importance of making sure that these two things are developed at the same time, rather than separately, by separate people. A game should have a good story, but this should not come at the expense of a fun game. There should be harmony.

I’ll know this next time.