The Static Beyond — Development Notes

The Static Beyond is a WIP bitsy game developed within a three week period for my Experimental Game Design class. 

The goal of the class is within the name. Students are given the opportunity to experiment with the bounds of the games they can create over the semester. This can mean anything from breaking the typical rules, conventions, and style of what is considered normal in the gaming space to making something that vaguely resembles a game, but doesn't quite fit within that box. 

We're encouraged take advantage of the creative freedom, since we're able to use any medium and method to achieve a desired final result. Games made within this time period can either be solo or collaborative. During the course, we'll also receive a total of four thematic prompts to base our project on. The first one was LOSS. 

Rather than choosing to explore how that would reflect in a game mechanically, I took a more narrative approach. Below is a documentation of my thoughts during the process. 

I find that I still have many areas for growth, and I hope to resume this project soon and bring it to a satisfying conclusion. 

Concept 

A young woman named Alex revisits her mom’s childhood home to clean things out before the house is resold. She explores the long abandoned and unkempt rooms and memories from her youth resurface. 

As she unearths more of her past and what ties her to the place, she realizes that she isn’t the only one inside. There are ghosts lurking in every corner, and they’re growing restless. 

Meant to explore grief and how particularly painful memories can feel like we are losing parts of ourselves in the moment. 

Still playing with the idea of using first vs second person narration. *After some consideration, I kept the story in first person. Considering it was meant to dabble in my own experiences, I didn’t want to generalize by putting the players in a box because grief is fluid and varies. 

Personal Stakes / Theme Breakdown 

I feel like grief is so prominent as a topic to explore within media. With loss being the theme of the first project, I know there’s plenty of other ways to spin it in ways that aren’t entirely narratively driven, but loss feels too personal not to speak on my own. I lost my grandma last year, and her absence still affects me today. There’s so many things I wish I could’ve done and things I could’ve said, but now I will never get that chance. 

Loss of a loved one, loss of self, loss of identity are all things I hope to touch upon. I also want to explore loss mechanically, but I understand with the limited timeframe that I may not be able to cover everything. 

Gameplay 

Bitsy is a mini game engine that prioritizes exploration and narrative. In doing so, it greatly simplifies the gameplay into a walking simulator with various rooms to navigate. The story is largely driven through item and sprite interactions. 

I’m planning on breaking up the game into different sections of the house: living room, bathroom, kitchen, bedroom. The game is going to start outside of the house and the protagonist is going to be working her way in, until eventually, she reaches the “heart” of the house—her grandma’s old bedroom. The resolution was going to take the protagonist outside into the backyard woods as a form of healing and coming to terms with what has happened. 

As of the submission date, I managed to make art, code, and write all the way to the kitchen. My plan was to continue showcasing how the house is slowly coming to life and messing with the protagonist’s head (e.g. the tv turning on by itself, the clock resuming its ticking despite having no batteries). 

Controls are standard of bitsy—WASD or arrow keys to move and progress through the text. 

Colors 

When coming up with a color palette I wanted to consider for the art, I was mostly thinking of a more muted or subdued color scheme. I know I wanted them to not be as vibrant, since I wanted to keep a serious tone to go alongside the somber writing. 

In the end, I thought a monochrome color palette would suit the theme the most (and partially because I wanted to play it safe). 

Art 

I am by no means a professional artist, but I figured I would try my hand at digital drawing to supplement some of the cutscenes, for lack of a better word. I utilized pixsy to convert the images into bitsy for use within the game.