Project : Stray
The Stray is a game developed with the research perspective of invoking sympathy for stray dogs in the player's mind. In the game, we play as a female dog who is a mother of two puppies. She and her kids have been starving for the last few days; hence she has to leave her children unprotected and go away in the hopes of finding some food. The game portrays the everyday life and struggle of a street dog.
Dialogue box
We could not give speech or voice to the dog that would take away the game's realism; hence we decided to portray the dog's thoughts through inner-monolog in the dialogue box.
Third Person Perspective
Through play testing, we discovered that players enjoyed and felt more personified as a dog when they could actually see and control the dog in the third person. The first-person quadrupedal low-height perspective did not directly correlate with the feeling of playing as a dog.
Sniff & Trail Mechanic
We use a trail mechanic and navmesh pathfinding AI to create a sniffing mechanic which leads the player to the next objective.
Environmental storytelling
We used environmental storytelling to express the brutal scenarios and circumstances which dogs have to face.
Scripted Events
Various scripted events occur throughout the gameplay, which is meant to invoke a sense of uncertainty and showcase the brutality of a stray world.
My Contributions
We were a team of six. We each specialized in different things and tackled various problems individually.
I was responsible for the programming and integration of various APIs & systems required for the application.
I was responsible for overseeing all the individual module development and testing and debugging the systems.
I was responsible for the player controller, which contained quadrupedal locomotion and other mechanics like sniffing and barking.
I was responsible for the dialogue box and event system that guided the player toward the next objective.