For my final project, I worked with bitsy 3D to create Gotter Get Stinkier
3D! based on the setting of The School Year game we played in class. Our
game was set in a high school in a tropical climate, that had a lack of
showers and an abundance of jocks who prided themselves on being stinky,
suffocating the rest of the school with Axe Body Spray. I had also adapted
part of The School Year into a twine game, which I took inspiration from
for my bitsy game. In both versions, you play as the new kid at school,
and your goal is to gain as much stench or cans of Axe as possible to earn
the approval of the strongest, stinkiest jock.
Before I started crafting the game, I took the advice of a few Oblique
Strategies cards:
“Use fewer notes”
I will attempt to develop the narrative intuitively while I work on the
visuals of the project.
I will try to not stick too closely to exactly how the events of The
School Year game played out, even if it is the main source material.
Instead, I will borrow its setting, characters, and some key elements.
“Simple subtraction”
I will try to simplify sprites,
items & tiles, to make my life easier, and to make sure that I can
actually finish developing the game within a reasonable timeframe. This
might also help to keep the game easy to navigate for players.
“Faced with a choice, do both”
I will attempt to source
dialogue from both the Voicebox predictive writer and crowdsourcing.
“Courage!”
I will challenge myself with this project: I
shall attempt to develop it in Bitsy 3D and add a suitable audio track.
“Retrace your steps”
I will make it necessary for the
player to retrace their steps if they want to finish the game or defeat
the final boss.
Instead of trying to use the usual babynames.com or
fantasynamegenerators.com, I decided to use the
Anagram Generator to create
interesting and varied names for NPCs. First, I would use a short phrase
or sentence to describe the NPC, then use the generator to create anagrams
of these descriptions, which can create some unusual results. The
following are what I had come up with:
“Just a normal jock” ⇒ “Raja Jock Molt Sun” ⇒ Raja
“Garden Variety Nerd” ⇒ “Agenda Trendy River” ⇒ River
“Science Duel Nerd” ⇒ “Credence Idle Sun” ⇒ Credence
“Suspicious Axe dealer” ⇒ “A Caroused Pixie Slues” ⇒ Pixie
“Janitor of notebook high” ⇒ “A Herb Foot Hooking Joint” ⇒ Herb
“The only teacher” ⇒ “Teacher Noel Thy” ⇒ Noel
“The best baker” ⇒ “Abbe The Treks” ⇒ Abbe
“Random baking student” ⇒ “A Disbarment Dunk Tong” ⇒ Tong
“Very stinky jock” ⇒ “Cyst Rev Ink Joky” ⇒ Ink
“Tech nerd in science class” ⇒ ”Scratched Science Linens” ⇒ Linen
“Science class jock” ⇒ “Jean Click Secs Cos” ⇒ Jean
“Sleeping in science class” ⇒ “Canceling Spiciness Lees” ⇒ Lee
“Forgotten textbooks” ⇒ “Betokens Fox Got Tort” ⇒ Fox
“Dandelion dealer” ⇒ “Adrenal Did Leone” ⇒ Leone
“Fencing obsessed jock” ⇒ “Bocce Needs Finks Jogs” ⇒ Bocce
“Annoying Hall monitor” ⇒ “A Hallooing Tinny Norm” ⇒ Norm
“Cafeteria Chef” ⇒ “Ceca Feather If” ⇒ Ceca
“Chatting in the cafeteria” ⇒ “A Cathartic Teethe Fig Inn” ⇒ Cath
“Active listener” ⇒ “Ace Resilient Tv” ⇒ Ace
“Yelling during lunch” ⇒ “Lurching Gunned Lily” ⇒ Lily
“Very busy nerd” ⇒ “By Dry Eve Urns” ⇒ Eve
“Petition writer” ⇒ “Wittier Pointer” ⇒ Pointer
“The axe legend” ⇒ “Eagle Dent Hex” ⇒ Eagle
As for creating the dialog of these NPCs, I used a mix of crowdsourcing
and the Voicebox predictive writer. I informed contributors that I was
creating a game, and told them about the general setting and theme of the
game. I also gave them some ideas of which types of NPCs I needed dialogs
for, such as jocks, nerds, teachers, and janitors. After gathering a wide
range of responses, I sorted them according to the NPCs or rooms they were
suited for. Then, I used Voicebox to create some more using the relevant
keyboards:
"Scrubs: janitor” for Herb the janitor
“Seinfield: all dialogue” for Credence, the science duel nerd
“Youtube cooking transcripts” for Abbe, the best baker
“Food ads” for Tong, the random baking student
And lastly, “Wired Product Reviews 2017” for Linen the tech nerd in
science class
The 3 monologs of the teacher, Mr. Noel, were written in a different way.
I used the introductions of textbooks or online classes as the raw
material (baking,
science,
theatre), scrambling them using charNG before manually editing them to make them
readable again. Then, I ran them through N+7 to introduce more variety,
before editing them a final time to be added to the game. This created
believable, yet intentionally slightly-too-long monologs that rewarded
players with 10 points each for sitting through them.
After putting all the pieces together, I played through the game while
reading the dialog aloud, using Otter.ai to generate a transcript. This
helped me iron out any awkward snags in the conversation, and I referred
to my transcript while editing the dialog to make it sound more natural.