Part Final: 

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Re-interpret a classic fairy or folk tale or well-known story: A Vampire Interactive Piece

https://squishyfrogs.itch.io/vamp-time

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Password:   alucard

Blood-curdling Tales​

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Humans talk and talks lead to stories. There isn’t a story which is completely unique and totally independent of another; and we can find the different versions or adaptations of folk tales in different cultures and at different times.

 

As our group is interested in finding a ‘universal’ story that people from different parts of the world will have empathy with, we thought of vampires. Yes, the concept of vampire came from Europe (Romania), but the similar idea of ‘human-shaped monsters only being active at night hunting humans for food’ can be found in a variety of cultures all around the world. The nature of vampires being hidden among common residents or longevity make them so different with (in different cultures) and impossible to meet each other.

 

So we begin to think, what if they see each other? What if an old-schooled Romanian vampire meets a cocky American vampire teenager from Twilight? Or Dio from JoJo meets the Chinese Jiangshi? Thus we had an idea of making such experiences as our story re-interpretation piece.

 

Since MeeNa has some great experience with designing games and game characters, we decided to take advantage of that and make a 2D point-and-click game: the kind of mouse-clicking 2D game that triggers new scenes by clicking and exploring elements in a scene.

 

We decided to make a little game and later found out that we’ll have to set a vampire as the main character (player) for two reasons: 

 

1. The pov can give a more immersive experience.

2. There will be many vampires/monsters. A normal human could be in danger and we hate that to happen to our players.

 

Later Dracula was set to be the protagonist. As the most classic vampire, we think Dracula is archaic and ‘mainstream’ enough to judge other vampire-alike creatures.

 

The idea was, to explore a multicultural monster house for the player(Dracula), and each room will lead the player into different scenes with interactive objects, discoverable artifacts for the player to collect, some sound effects and its own sound/theme, and even some NPCs the player can interact with.

 

For the tone of the game, we went for a less scary, but rather playful visual presentation. This style will make the game available for players from all age groups. With the collecting artifact feature, the game offers players surprise when exploring each room, adding playfulness to the game.

 

Our group members come from different cultural backgrounds with unique vampire stories, so we thought about the vampire stories in our own cultural notions, we collected and remastered these stories in three parts, which later are made into three scenes: the American ‘Twilight’ teenager vampire, the Chinese Jiangshi, and the Japanese urban legend monster.

 

Individually, we designed the scene, the interactive elements, the dialogues(reactions) and the sound effects for each of our own parts. MeeNa did the teenager American vampire part, Shannon did the Chinese Jiangshi part, and I did the Japanese urban legend part. Later we gathered them together, with the great effort of MeeNa and her friend, had them run and tested in Unity.

 

The final version of our game is called “blood-curdling tales”. It represents our idea of transforming spooky urban legends into a playful interactive experience of exploration. It is also a project of culture mix. We constructed three scenes that represent urban legends from different cultures. And here is where you entered the world we built. Have fun exploring!