Harvest for your employers in a post-apocalyptic world, where your kind is disposable.
Roles: Narrative Designer, Writer, Level Designer, Programmer, Artist.
Tools used: Godot, Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop.
Solo project.
HARVESTER is a short game I created during my Advanced Narrative Design course during my 3rd year at Sheridan College. You play as a Harvester, a person whose job it is to collect mysterious, valuable stones for their heartless corporate overlords.
Play it here!
Roles
Narrative Designer
The project’s main goal is to blend gameplay with narrative by telling the game’s story through its mechanics, only using text to provide context for the game. The story is one of greedy corporations, and how their ambitions harm the workers whose well-being is often disregarded. The gameplay and the narrative are cyclical, both to reflect the tone and themes, but also to keep the scope focused and manageable, telling the story while reusing assets and level designs.
Writer
I wrote a comprehensive narrative design and worldbuilding document that includes an overview of HARVESTER's world, thoroughly detailing its history and inner workings. While a lot of it never got into the final game due to the project's limited scope, it was still very fun to make, and helped me learn what part of the setting needed I to focus on for the game itself.
Challenges and Lessons Learned
It was difficult to determine how much text to use while still allowing the gameplay itself to handle the main storytelling. It was only used in-between gameplay to imply essential elements of the narrative that couldn’t be wordlessly conveyed within the project’s scope, such using values to convey that the player is now controlling a different character rather than respawning after they die. I realized after finishing the project that I could've gotten away with more text, like menus between shifts to show essential expenses (food, rent, etc.) similar to games like Papers, Please. It's something I'll be sure to do next time I tackle this design challenge.
