Our game, Valley, is a 3D first person simulator. The player is in a mountainous valley and can freely walk around to explore the area. While walking around, the player can collect small red mushrooms growing in small patches in several areas of the valley. We wanted the overall experience of the game to be explorative so we created four different areas within the valley for the player to find while navigating through the valley- a Lily flower patch, a cemetery, a hill with huge mushrooms and a hill with a view of the whole valley. Because of the explorative nature of the space, there is no single objective that needs to be achieved to reach the end. The player can keep walking in the space and discover the mini-areas.

The players starts at the hill with the view. When we started the project,the player started at the other end of the terrain. But we decided to make this change in order to give the player a better idea of the environment that they have landed in. Since a part of the play experience is collecting the mushrooms growing in the valley, we created a small path where the player lands which goes down the hill. This path has a few mushrooms that the player will inevitably collide with. The click sound generated on walking over a mushroom helps the player understand that they can collect these mushrooms. Even though we have created a path through the valley to help guide the player to the various mini-spaces within the valley, we have also placed mushrooms outside this path to encourage the player to explore the space on their own instead of just following the path. So the player has both options- just following the path created and landing on the mini-spaces, and walking through the space without following the path and coming across the mini-spaces gradually.

The four mini-spaces were added after the play-testing session. During the play-test, we only had a mountainous terrain with the player starting at one end and walking through the terrain while collecting mushrooms. The player needed to reach the other end of the terrain to find the hill with huge mushrooms and a view of the game space. However the player was not aware of the hill at the end- it was supposed to be found out through exploration. According to the feedback received, the distance between the start and end points was a lot and walking from one end to the other while just collecting mushrooms with the same environment throughout would become boring after a point and might end up with the player ending the game without even finding the hill with the mushrooms. Therefore, we decided to create a more explorative environment by creating the four mini-spaces that are spread out throughout the valley.

I believe we were able to create an environment where the player would explore the valley and have a pleasant experience while doing so. Even though we did not have the mini-spaces during the play-test session, the player was able to figure out that they can collect the mushrooms and also ended up exploring the valley instead of just following the path which was the goal of our play space.

Valley conveys the narrative of exploring without a definite goal. Throughout the game, the player comes across various instances that could count as the objective but the game as a whole does not have a final goal to be achieved. The only goal is exploring the space. There is also an element of peace and calmness in the game space that is conveyed through sounds like the chirping of birds and a light breeze blowing. This creates a more natural and pleasant environment. There is also an element of mystery since the player has no idea about what to finally achieve or where to go to end the game since there is no end to the game. Seeing how each individual player reacts to the space is interesting.

Google Drive link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xIWQ7997REO8swUPN8KmjJ9a2NymHEfs?usp=sharing