A 2D game in which the player with a limited social battery attempts to navigate through and escape from a party. The game is intended to be lighthearted and comical in nature. It mirrors reality, but does not replicate it. For introverted audiences, it is a relatable but also idealized world where they can stand up for themselves and not have to go with the flow of social norms. For others, it provides an exaggerated but somewhat realistic perspective to how such social settings can look like to introverts. It also contains underlying critiques on the absurdity of social conventions and draining nature of shallow human conversations.
Play GameHere are some early sketches of characters, attack patterns, game mechanics, and world aesthetic.
The first part of the game features platform elements, where the player faces an overwhelming amount of enemies attacking them with small talk. The player can defend themselves with their death stare, which silences enemies and freezes them in place, but only temporarily. There are also other introverts hiding along the way, and saving them increases the effectiveness of the player’s attack.
Near the exit, the player encounters the final boss – the Social Butterfly – and has to fight it through a dialogue system. As the boss relentlessly continues a shallow conversation, the player is given different options of responses that inflict various amounts of damage. Ultimately, they will have to get out of the conversation before their own social battery runs out, so they can successfully leave the party.
The characters are intentionally designed to be generic and abstract personas instead of specific individuals. They all take the silhouette of slimes, which are often the most common creature in role-playing games. The design of introverted characters focuses on their eye (reflecting their observant quality), while that of extroverted characters focuses on their mouth (representing their verbal expressiveness). This serves to maximize the universality of the scenario and resonance among viewers.
read more about my inspirations
-Created basic sprites including characters and continuous background and imported into Unity. Set up tile map.
-Created a short platform section demonstrating basic features: Coded player movement & attack, basic enemy patrol & attack, player health system, item collection (battery recovery, introverts).
-Created dialogue tree and coded basic structure for the boss fight system.
-Added start and game over screens to form a loop that begins from the restroom.
-Replaced enemy bullets with letters. Replaced energy items with shots.
-Added more simple expression changes for characters (will add refined animations in 160B).
-Coded so that introverts stack on top of player once collected and are kept over loops. Extended platform section to display this feature.
-Refined Boss fight UI. Added exit and win screen.
Here are screenshots of the final game and instructions for how to play.
try it yourself
