Ball-Life is my final major project (solo project) for experimental games. This game focuses on the life of a footballer. It's experimental as it shows how pressure from family, fans, and the various difficulties of football can affect how a player can perform. This piece raises awareness of tribalism in sport and competitiveness and how that can affect a footballer's environment. This work was graded a B (65%) and duration of the prototype was 2 months.
This project was purely experimental and was for me to explore mechanics and systems to create an aesthetic.
The responsibilities of this project were:
To provide an experimental way to show the experience of a footballer.
Ensure the aesthetic of this game is communicated not only via mechanics but visuals, sound and dialogue.
Make every interaction rely on one core system (in this case, pressure).
Researching various subjects and relating personal thoughts about a topic to a game creating a fresh and unique experience.
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Download instructions are shown in the itch.io page.
Design Process
Game pitch
The challenge for the pitch was to ensure the game's experimental nature was communicated. To achieve this, I had to look at various materials such as academic journals on competitiveness, tribalism and procedural rhetoric and encapsulating that abstractly would make my game experimental. I chose football to highlight these concepts because football shows people, society and tribalism in a very extreme way.
Design Document
Game Loops
These are the game loops for the experimental game. The challenge was how am I going to communicate the pillars of tribalism and competitiveness. I wanted maintaining to be a part of the core loop because this will be managing elements in the characters life relating to pressure.
Interacting will showcase the tribalism of fans as they can be very loyal or hostile to the character. The reason behind interactions being over-exaggerated is that this shows the extremes of football fans. In the meta loop, resting and training will allow the player to relieve pressure. The meta loop segments the game into days and weeks providing balance to the pacing and offering variety.
Systems and other mechanics
systems
numeric design
sample level 1
sample level 2
sample level 3
sample level 4
The numeric design shows how the systems will be altered to create a feeling of pressure throughout the game.
I wanted pressure to be the overarching system in the game. Pressure is displayed to the player as a bar and the player's actions add or subtract pressure. Pressure will alter the interactions and can create burn-in (shown in the document) for the player. Pressure creates a delicate nature of interactions in the game as the player would have to be careful about choices in and outside of football. I wanted pressure to holistically affect the components of the game ie player, wife, team-mates and opposition.
I want bleed in sections to show the overlap between the systems as the outside interactions become the rhythmic sports activity and the player thoughts about football affect his personal life. This is shown in a mock up (see sample level 3 first mock up) this is all driven by the pressure system and the previous choices the player has made.