TO EXIST: Eternally
Sophie, a seemingly normal person, with seemingly mundane life and common office job, suffer from a serious lack of individuality and meaning, until one day when she decides to make a change for the better, whether it is to escape the stuffy corporate life and pursue her own passions, or break the system and confront the truth.
Game Concept
With my project, I want to use the idea of a multi-layer simulation to ask the question if our perception of reality is truthful or is it just our senses lying to us? By having multiple levels of the simulation, each vastly different from the other, the player will keep questioning if they’ve escaped the simulation or not, or if there is truly escape at all. There is also the underlying theme of modern alienation, which all the characters experience to some extent, which causes them to always be unsatisfied with their life. I believe the theme of alienation and simulation works well together in creating an interesting story about the philosophical struggles of modern life. True to the spirit of a visual novel, the options in this game will lead to many different outcomes, depending on how the player wants to play the game.
The player will have the option to play the game as a typical slice-of- life story or a more bizarre sci-fi adventure, or if they don’t want to play by the rules at all.
Features
The main character, a seemingly normal human being, has a seemingly mundane life, with a common office job and suffers from a serious lack of individuality and meaning, until one day when they decide to make a change for the better, whether it is to escape the stuffy corporate life and pursue their own passions, or break the system and confront the truth. Along the way, the player will have the option to either keep the character in the dark and go along with the story or shatter the characters’ perception of reality and possibly induce some existential crisis.
Features:
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All character path has been unlocked
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Make choices to forward the story
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9 total new endings ( and 1 secret ending)
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Currently stands at a lot of words
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High quality art and mediocre writing done by me
Credits
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Writing and programming by me
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Graphics by me
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Emotional support by my mom
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This game was made with Ren'Py.
Development
Research & Development
For this project, my research question is: How do we respond to a multi-layer simulation that continuously evolve to accommodate our changing mindset? And I conducted my research into the topic of simulations and perception of reality in order to answer this question,
I’m also quite invested in the philosophical aspect of my story. There’s an overarching existentialist theme that I want to include in my story, especially with something like AI, where there is a juxtaposition between the liberating freedom that it gains from intelligence and the purposelessness brought about by this same intelligence. So this is another aspect that I included in my story.
Sketch & Storywriting
Once I had an idea of what I want to do in terms of story and characters, I began making sketches and drafting my story, before transcribing them to code.
Illustrations & Assets
Here are some illustrations and assets I made for this project, which include character sheets, character revisions, character sprites, cut scenes, UI,...
Pre-releases
Before the final version was released, I made a few pre-release versions to ask for feedback, so here are the trailers from the early versions
Want to know even more?
Thank you for reading my game development, if you're interested in seeing my full research and design process of this game, please consider reading my Game Design Document. And if you have any further questions or notes, feel free to contact me!
