Game Title
Guardian of the Whisper

Developer Name
Team TimeZone

Short Promo Blurb
Wake up… An unfamiliar voice wakes you from a slumber. You don’t seem to remember your name, or anything at all. Your outfit seems to suggest that you used to be a researcher of some sort, but you are not very sure… What is going on in this world?

Full Description
This 2D platformer game will give you the chance to learn about climate change through the point of view of people fighting against climate change and animals affected by it. Its immersive, pixel environment will let you see the impacts of corporate greed and explore endangered species’ habitats destroyed by a variety of disasters caused by human activities. Use the gift of the forest to perform melee attacks and navigate the terrain. Make unexpected friends, and encounter powerful enemies. Find out what’s truly going on, and who you are. Most importantly, learn how you can change the story and turn climate doomerism into climate action.

Promo Image(s)
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/2/folders/17Vt2WPt5QJLmZwDuf6-4IG3TsX7yLBVz

Promo Video
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1V0YFfOeKerZfdErLalvM5qKyP-x3Av4E?usp=drive_link

Artistic Statement / Use of Theme(s)
The main theme we wanted to convey with our art and with our plot for the game is that nature has its own voice, and that sometimes that voice rejects attempts to change what it is. We also wanted to demonstrate how man made events can have real impact on natural forces and corrupt/disrupt their natural order.

The main theme we wanted to convey with our art and with our plot for the game is that nature has its own voice, and that sometimes that voice rejects attempts to change what it is. We also wanted to demonstrate how man made events can have real impact on natural forces and corrupt/disrupt their natural order. We emphasized the “story” part of the theme by implementing strong narrative elements into our game, and the “change” part was intended to be reflected by the plot.
The plot we created involves the main character following the guidance of a voice to fight against a giant corporate conglomerate called “Company”, who’s involved in many heavy industries that impacts the environment, and became increasingly aggressive in its practice. We intended to base each level off of a region, and build main mechanics from a climate issue the region suffers from, with the human cause of the issue integrated into enemy designs. For instance, the 1st level or the game content currently released, was based on northern coniferous forests, focused on acid rain and some elements of excessive logging. Towards the end, the main character would remember their past life as an environmental scientist who’s been investigating the effect of those activities, and realize fighting climate change wasn’t just about fighting the “big bad”. Eventually, the voice would be revealed to be not nature, but a powerful spirit that wanted humanity removed through force. Unfortunately, we were only able to implement the very beginning of the plot due to limitations of the downgraded scope.

Development Summary
In the beginning, we used a platform called Miro to organize all our ideas. Initially, we had a larger scope and wanted to get the following levels: forest, arctic, ocean, and savannah. However, we realized this scope was far more than we could cover in a month, so we only made a forest level. We also were planning on implementing a lumberjack boss, but we changed our minds since we wanted to show how corporate greed eventually affects animals and plants in the long run even after they have left. Thus, we made a tree boss instead, who has become deformed due to acid rain in the area. We also were planning on having a fox NPC in the first level but when we finalized that we would choose a Scandinavian forest as our inspiration source, we researched and found that Scandinavian wolves are endangered species, so we decided on making a Scandinavian wolf NPC instead.


We were surprised by how many changes we had to make to our original lore ideas, but we were able to come up with a cohesive message for our game that fit within the first level. We began work on planning out the exact story beats, non-playable characters, the player character, and so on. We decided to leave the identity of the player character relatively ambiguous, as we wanted the player to assume the role as an observer and participant. We wanted to focus on giving voices to the NPC characters, as they were the ones being impacted by the events of the game, as a parallel to the real wildlife and plant life that is being impacted in the real world.

When playing as the player character, we wanted players to understand the real life parallels of man made climate change that were taking place, and by playing the game, how we could bring attention to these events in real life.

We first thought of many different types of perspectives we would use to depict the game, 3d, isometric, 2.5 d, we finally decided on using a simple 2d platformer perspective as this would best fit into our scope for the project.


To coordinate making sure we were all working on the game, we utilized Github as a platform to upload all of our code to the same place, that way we didn't have to manually share all of our work with one another. Another choice we made is that we decided on the Unity game engine to run our game, as the documentation for it was the most extensive and could be relied upon for use when we were developing the game. We had many pitfalls during development, namely, lack of communication, inaccurate evaluation of our skill sets, software incompatibilities, and poorly planned development schedule. Before the development started, we had lacking communications that weren't clear enough, which led to inaccurate evaluation of our skill sets and not being able to create a detailed work schedule documenting goals and milestones. As development continued, we encountered a problem with github that made synchronizing progress harder. The problem caused us to lose some progress on the tilemap, which led to the texture issue being released in the production phase. Six people were involved in making this game.

Release Plan
For now, we are working on finishing up the game to release as planned for the Indiecade climate jam. We will see how it is received and review any and all critiques we may receive on it, which may feed into how we develop on the game in the future. We as a team will make sure to keep in contact with one another to decide on the future of the game and its development.