A Change in History

Katarina Scoma

            In my game/story, I wanted to take the player back in time to one of the most major events in history, the assassination of President JFK. To make this happen I had to do a bit of research to make the story as compelling as possible.

Room 1: The first room the player gets dropped off into is the city of Dallas. This room is extremely relevant to the story because it gives the time and place while not completely reveling all the information yet.

Room 2: I made this room to be the city hall, I made it the city hall because that is where people can find information about the city and city halls are typically found in the heart of the city.

Room 3: The next room I made is inside city hall. I made the character walk into the city hall in search of more information (kind of like a treasure hunt) to make of a more compelling story. The player knows they need to go to the parade but they don’t know how to get there and why they have to watch it in a certain place.

Room 4: This room is actually a completely different room but I made it identical to room 2 to keep the narrative going and to find more clues to know exactly where to walk.

Room 5: Room five is outside the book depository. From doing further research, I found that the shooter of JKF was an actual employee of the Book Depository and took aim and shot JFK from the 6^th floor.

Room 6: This is where the player will walk into the Book Depository to discover the elevator that will take him to the 6^th floor. He speaks to one of the sprites that gives him further direction. The player should be getting the hint now from the time and place of the clues.

Room 7: This is the last and final room the player will come to. This room has two sprites, one of which is the killer of JFK, one warning him to get the gun, and then we have the gun. Once the avatar picks up the gun he will walk up to the shooter and kill the shooter before the shooter kills JFK. Once he accomplishes that task the game will end. In Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud page 32 references shapes and how the human brain can compare shapes to faces. In my game, I used stick figures ass all my characters in order to keep the realistic narrative going. II felt that it would be more compelling and easier to find when searching for a specific “sprite”. McCloud also refers to timing and time frames, he likes to explain how word bubbles should be arranged in order for the reader to read something first or not (pg. 96). In my game, I used timing when the avatar transitions into different rooms. I made it to when the avatar pops up he will almost be forced to run into a sprite to then receive his information. McCloud also talks about abstraction, and how stripping the detail out of a character does not change who the character is; however, it can make the scene less intense (pg. 30). In my game, I tried keeping the characters as abstract as possible, by making the characters and items to be picked up like actual humans and objects that one would see in real life. McCloud refers to transitions between panels, he says “when “Bleeds” are used – When a panel runs off the edge of the page – this effect is compounded.” When developing my game, I used transitions between the rooms to signify that time has passed from time to time. When the avatar moves to the right, the room also will swipe right to help signify that you have moved east and a couple minutes have flown by in the journey.