Rolandus

1. The game opens up in a dark hallway where the character picks up their grandfather’s broken pocket watch. They transition into the past, represented by a wave exit into the next room.

2. The second room is a train station. Many people mill about, and the player learns they have traveled to the past. The train seems to be inoperable at the moment, according to a dapper gentleman. Apparently, the conductor was murdered by a witch who lives to the east. 

3. The player travels to the east follows a road to the witch’s rundown home. Townsfolk with torches are hiding behind a large tree, waiting to set fire to her home.

4. Inside the witch's home, the player learns the conductor had been in a relationship with the witch, but a jealous admirer of his murdered him and blamed it on her. She instructs the player to take her last letter to her son, who was taken away by her mother.

5. The player leaves and travels to a cemetery where the conductor has been laid to rest. The grandmother leans, dying, against his grave with the baby in his arms, where the townsfolk will eventually find them. The player picks up another pocket watch, which is truly the same pocket watch from the beginning, just much newer.

6. The player travels to another dark hallway and returns through another portal to the present day.

7. The player arrive in their Grandfather’s room and give him the note from the witch, who is his mother. Then ending screen displays the contents of the note.     

Throughout the semester, I have learned quite a bit from Scott McCloud’s perspective on effective storytelling and using different techniques to make a story more dynamic. For example, his concepts of abstraction, transitions and timeframe were able to help me create a more immersive world. For my avatar, I created a character that would be part of the story. They wore a hat that would have been reminiscent of the time period that they travelled to. In addition, they had a more iconic shape than the scenery in each room. For example, the train station has a detailed train and the road to the witch’s house has a large tree, foliage and of lot of detail in the house itself. The avatar never directly talks, as I wanted the player to feel as though they were the person traversing through the scenes, as McCloud mentions (pg. 36). I chose to only use transitions to represent traveling to another time period. I used the wavy transition when exiting the long hallway and entering the train station. In addition, I used the same transition when exiting the final hallway into the player’s grandfather’s room. For the timeframe aspect, I tried to match the dialogue to the type of language people of the time period would use. In addition, I tried to represent the time period by mixing industrial and antiquated environmental storytelling elements, such as the train and the run-down hut of the witch. 

I considered much of what I learned from the theme park readings and videos. Specifically, I learned much about adding details to the environment from the videos of the themed rides, such as the Peter Pan ride and the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Much thought and detail were put into the environment of those rides. For example, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride had spare rum bottles thrown about haphazardly, had incredible detail in the ships and had many background pirates to fill the scenes. For my project, I wanted to set the scene and tell the story more through the environment until the purpose of the player’s visit to the past is revealed later. For instance, in the train room, I added more characters than necessary in order to fill the space with meaningful storytelling elements, as the Pirates of the Caribbean ride does with many of its scenes. In addition, I added details to the inside of the Witch’s house to display the magic within it, such as the giant cauldron, the floating broom, the crystal ball and a dog that would reappear later in the grandfather’s room. In addition, I added floating particles around the room to fill the empty space and to suggest that the atmosphere of the place is chaotic.