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Professor Maren & The Aqueous Stones's itch.io pageTheme
My target audience was college students with a fascination in oceans and related phenomena. The game takes place entirely on the open ocean, with the central gameplay element showcasing the raw "awesomeness" and beauty of the ocean.
The game's story focuses on climate change, specifically on ideas of there being a "Silver Bullet" solution to the problem to be found with technology or innovation. Professor Maren, the main story character, leaves behind traditional science to research a mystical solution to climate change found within the Aqueous Stones.
The gameplay focuses on her struggle against greedy corporations "B.I.G. O.I.L." seeking to steal her stones and research to monetize it for the few, instead of for the good of the many. (I do not condone destroying swathes of enemy ships with giant ocean disasters {It's just game logic}, and I interpret this as a metaphorical struggle more than anything).
The world had been protected from sea level rise by a powerful spirit, Gaia, but that protection is waning, and will eventually shatter. Professor Maren ultimately fails to gather all of the stones in time before the protection barrier keeping the excess melt water up in the artic shatters, resulting in sudden and rapid sea level rise, and the game visually models the effects of sea level rise. Her research is not for nothing however, as she is able to use the stones to save lives by preventing any further climate shifts, but significant damage is already done.
The main theme of the game centers around the risks of relying on breakthrough technology to solve climate change. Sure it may work, but what if it's too late? I hoped to inspire the idea that breakthrough climate technologies should be pursued, but not wholly relied on.
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Comments
- The sound design took me in immediately, both the musical score and the typing sounds that drew my attention to a very intriguing narrative hook
- Business Industrial Giants Oligarchical Imperial Legion, lololol
- Musical feedback was great, I felt triumphant when I finally figured out how to stop other ships
- Using the awesome power of the ocean in the form of whirlpools, hurricanes and waterspouts is a really creative and compelling mechanic
- Using satellite earth imagery and the graphical recreation of weather events was unlike any other game I've played before, very attention-getting
- A beautiful, contemplative and philosophical experience
I had a lot of fun playing the game! Here are some art related notes.
- The UI and the game art feel like they are from different experiences. The globe and units give off a serious game, almost military simulation vibe while the UI speaks to the bouncier flash games of the early 2000s. These can both work on their own but together its sending mixed signals about the experience I am playing now. There's a lot of design history to game art and UI it might be worthwhile spending sometime looking at ui on https://www.gameuidatabase.com/ when starting a project to put together a mood board. Consider looking at some games that share a more playful art direction while depicting world maps to match the narrative you are building, its important to have design precedents when creating the visual language of a game.
- When the characters speak together in the beginning of the game, I would get rid of the animation on the text and just show the solid text block, that or take the time to parse the string by word as opposed to by character to prevent a word appearing on one line for a half second before popping down to the next line as the rest of the characters of the word appear. It will make it easier to read and overall feel cleaner. Also some sort of portrait appearing for the different speakers would be helpful. This serves a dual purpose of communicating more about the speaker but also prevents confusion about who is speaking at any given time. Its pretty easy to miss the text box naming the speaker changing as the text rolls.
-I want to compliment your audio and music! Nice decisions here.
Overall the game was really fun. Great work!
Fascinating game, very cool! It's very interesting how you used a more fantastical setting to dramatize the issue. The music, story and mechanics work great. It's short but still interesting to play!
It's also an interesting choice to cast doubt on the protagonist's path, making you think about using your time to focus on actions that matter. Really liked this one.