The Light In The Storm

WASD to move

Space to Interact 

The Light In The Storm is a single-player 2D narrative game in which players play as a boy named Aiden who goes around his neighborhood in Austin, Texas during the snowstorm of 2021 to help his neighbors in need. Players use the WASD keys to move up, down, left, and right as well as the spacebar to interact with neighbors, progress through dialogue, enter a grocery store, and shovel snow by holding a spacebar near a snow block. Players are also given dialogue choices in which they can select with the associated number.

I was inspired to make this game by the events that unfolded in Texas recently with the snowstorm devastating many people. I felt that not many people realize how different weather infrastructures are in the south compared to the northern part of the United States so they don’t understand why something such as snow which is common in a place like New York can become so disruptive in Texas because its water pipes and powerline do not withstand the freezing temperatures I created this narrative experience to get players to empathize with people who are in need and make them aware that they can help them too. 

For the gameplay, I decided to focus on my main verb of speaking and giving players choices that affect their play experience. To plan my dialogue, I used Whimsical.com to map a dialogue tree that I could use to plan out the interactions between Aiden and his neighbors. Whimsical was a really useful tool since it was easy to create dialogue branches in which I could visualize where certain dialogue choices could lead to and how it may affect the rest of the game. Whimsical also allowed me to label each dialogue so I could easily call the right one in code inside GameMaker Studio 2. The dialogue section was a difficult part to create because I had to tweak it differently from the way I usually did my dialogue system in Unity. Since GameMaker couldn’t use an “OnTriggerEnter” I had to hardcode the area where players could start dialogues. To do this, I looked into the GameMaker manual and found “distance_to_object(object)” to be the correct way in which I could measure the distance between my player and the NPCs. From there if my player was in range, I could trigger the dialogue. Another iteration I took into consideration from my playtest was to make my dialogue boxes in different positions to make it more clear who was talking. In addition, I also added a character portrait to help players differentiate as well. My other verbs were buying and shoveling so I implemented my buying mechanic with the relationship between Aiden and Jordan since the former can enter the supermarket and buy supplies for the latter based on what they can afford. I also created the shoveling mechanic during the interaction between Aiden and Mrs. Friedman so that Aiden can shovel the snow out of Mrs. Friedman’s pathway. 

Overall, I’m proud of my work since I rarely make games where I do the design, coding, art, and sound. I’ve never drawn animations for my own games and decided to take time to learn the GameMaker tools along with the drawing tablet I borrowed from the Game Center to create the 6 frame animation for the player moving in all directions. This project also helped me to focus on the scope since I originally planned to have a section where Aiden can have a snowball fight with a kid asking to play with him. However, I decided to focus on the more meaningful parts of the story instead of creating this moment.