Project Contrast is an in-progress project I started during my junior year of university. The scope of the game is to mix the story-telling aspects of classic cRPG’s, the dungeons from Pokemon: Mystery Dungeon, and brain games that involve pattern matching.
The initial purpose of this game was to explore how video games might be used in Philosophy of Mind research involving the understanding of qualitative experience. You can read about the research I did into the topic of game development’s overlap into philosophy of mind and neuroscience here:
Creating Project Contrast: a Video Game exploring Consciousness and Qualia
Screenshots are also below if you are only glancing through:
Alpha 1.0 build trailer (since have added mystery dungeon mechanics, and various level-exploring tools to the player):
Worldbuilding
Currently there exists a 25 page story and worldbuilding doc that covers the entire game story, and gameplay implementation into overall world. I created a video examining how I tried to implement the original purpose of this game as a philosophical tool of research into it’s world design:
Due to spoilers, here is only a brief glimpse of the worldbuilding doc:
ACT 1 (Labyrinth and Gate 01)
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Upon escaping The Labyrinth Skal Dormio (the nomad who gave you their system) and Ingrid (Groundskeeper of Gate 07), inform you that the Great Nomad, Magnus Yonoir, heard of your awakening from the two of them, and has a message for you.
The message is sent through a one-way static video message.
Magnus Yonoir: Greetings “player name”, I am Yonoir, a fellow Nomad and Delegate of the United Affiliates. It has come to my attention that you control the Nomad of Gate 07. This is both great news, and a great responsibility. While I cannot inform you of all the details of your position due to transmission limitations - I will leave that for Skal and Ingrid as best as they are able - I can give some insight.
“With your arrival, the world is on the verge of upturning. Whatever reason you decided to visit this world for, I implore you to consider your position and place your responsibilities before your own interests, the entire survival of our world depends upon it. Imus Obitus is nigh upon the Second Severing, and you are the key.
I will arrive at Gate 07 within a few days. I look forward to meeting you, Nomad.” ...
If you are interested in this project / want to work with me, contact me and I may grant access to viewing the world building doc.
Design Documentation
Below are some of the design ideation documents that went into the creation of the above alpha gameplay.
The gameplay loops involves traversing hand-made levels with doors and blockades that the player must ‘dip’ below into a procedurally generated mystery dungeon. In this mystery dungeon the player traverses a virus-laden hostile environment with their movement tech, where they must pattern match symbols that correspond to the particular virus in order to destroy the virus.
Upon destroying the virus (known in-game as VOID) the blockades clear, and doors unlock.
The main motivating driver to progress is additional movement tech unlocks, additional ‘keys’ to eradicate more complex viruses, and to progress the story.
Example of the pattern match, which unlocks after a brief memory-based game.
Grid increases from 3×3 to 7×7 as you progress through the memory game.
Rune book keeps track of your unlocked runes.
Long term the game will be released with about 8 hours of gameplay across 7 varying levels (gates), a total of 175 rune combos, and likely 4 different movement techs to navigate all with their own skill trees. See below for additional screenshots, gameplay, and updates.
Alpha 2.0 gameplay update:
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[…] we tried to implement a light mechanic, using the same light system as Project Contrast where you would take damage when you were in shadow, but ran out of time. See the initial concept […]