Game Design Document (GDD) Lonely Party

Logline A socially anxious student must get through the remaining 30 minutes of a party, he may choose

to embrace or fight his social awkwardness during this time.

Synopsis With 30 minutes to the end of a party a socially anxious student is standing in the corner of the

main room, alone. With this context the game begins giving you control in first person over this

student. With a time-limit of 30 minutes you are free to create your own story narrative of what

happened in those last 30 minutes. With no clear goal, you are free to explore the party and

interact with your surroundings and people.

Upon approaching people you might notice your character feeling nervous (shaky cam, avoiding

faces, controller rumbling), approaching other people to start a conversation depends on your

choice of different introductory statements. Those statements can lead to rejection or the

beginning of a conversation, depending on that your character may become more nervous or gain

some confidence which will improve his nervousness. You may also choose to interact with other

surrounding objects like drinks, which may lead to different interactions with people or getting

drunk. By the end of the 30 minutes depending on your actions, different endings will happen,

encouraging replay value.

Potential market and genre This game is meant to be played by a teen, young adult audience familiar with or wanting to

experience and learn from social anxiety and teen angst. The genre for this game would fit with

the group of games referred to as “walking simulator” like Gone Home and Firewatch.

Visualization Material

World and Character descriptions Characters: At the start of the game you will be able to choose the gender and name of the main

character. This main character is meant to be blank slate for the player to project himself as.

World: The world of the game will take place in an apartment flat, the balcony, building elevator,

building reception and a store across the street. Inside the apartment flat there is the main room

connecting to: the kitchen, two bedrooms, a bathroom, the balcony and outside. Inside each room

there are different people and objects to interact with.

The game will have like Gone Home lots of objects with which you can interact with. These objects

can be moved or used as a conversation starter. Different objects will have different properties,

uses and effects on the world.

Visual Style

Visually the game would have a low-polygon style like “That Dragon Cancer”.

The game will have a similar color-scheme as “Thirty Flights of Loving” along with the glow

effects and some of the abstractness.

The game will use similar lighting and particle effects like the ones used in Journey. This

lighting will be used to daze the player and give a visual marker for how intoxicated the

player might be.

Mechanics and Game feel

Similar to Oxenfree dialogue trees will appear around characters as speech bubbles, giving you

options for starting a conversation. Depending on your previous conversations and objects you are

carrying new bubbles can appear and others disappear.

Inspired by Depression Quest depending on how your character is feeling some of the dialogue

bubbles will appear with strikethrough, telling the player that if they improve how the character

feels they will be able to choose those dialogue bubbles again.

Although I am not yet sure how well the implementation will work, I would like to

communicate the speech bubbles like Dropsy does with short animated images. I would

like to keep all kind of text to a minimum.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons created a strong emotional connection between the player

and the playable characters through the gameplay and controller interaction. I would like

to create similar connections in my game through the controller.

Prototype I used RPG Maker to create a layout of how the flat where the party is taking place would look.

The actual game is intended to be a first-person 3D game done on a 3D capable engine. Because

RPG Maker is so easy to use I decided to use it to plan the game in 2D. Below the link to my

website where you can download the prototype.

https://camilo-valbuena.itch.io/lonely-party-prototype

Screenshots Most of the features I explain below in the captions of the screenshot are not present in the

prototype at this moment. These features will be included in the final version of the game.

This is the main room were the game begins. There is lots of people moving and talking in groups.

You can interact with all the people in the room, everyone has a different personality. The loud

music from the room make the player character anxious. To the left there is a carpet that leads to

the balcony. The top right carpet to the kitchen. The bottom right circle carpet to the social

bathroom. Finally the carpet in the bottom of the flat takes you to a passage.

This is the balcony were your character will be able to retreat to reduce his anxiety and escape the

loud music of the main room. The player would also be able to interact with the telescope, BBQ,

look down the street or have a cigarette.

From the main room going right leads to the kitchen. In the kitchen you can make coffee and drink

water.

There isn’t much to do in the bathroom. If the player drinks too much he might need to come here

to puke and clean himself.

This is the main bathroom it will have the same functions as the other bathroom with the addition

of being able to use the shower.

This passage lead to the bedrooms of the flat and the main bathroom.

You can only enter the bedroom to the left. In this bedroom the player can rest or play the arcade

games.