Type :
AA Vertical Slice
PC - Narrative - 1 Player
Cold Trust is a narrative-driven game based on the relationships between people and the concept of trust.
In this 3D game, heavily inspired by movies like The Lighthouse or The Shining and actual scientific discoveries, you will have to make impactful choices and be ready to question your ethics.
Made by a team of 11 students :
* 3 Game Designers : Baptiste Luvwezo Mampasi, Ko Tong Tong and Charlotte Defives
* 3 Game Artists : Antoine Boudet, Yann Kukolewsky and Anna Messerschmitt
* 2 Programmers : Marc Cerutti and Etienne Tramaux
* 1 Sound Designer : Dorian Desplats
* 1 Manager : Eve-Marie Tissier
* 1 UX/UR Designer : Nadia Taallah
My work in details
* Writing - Story & dialogues
* Narrative Design - Pathing
* Game Design - Character special skills
* QA Testing
* Improvement axis
* Bonus
Writing
My main mission on Cold Trust has been to imagine a story that would fit the original pitch made by the graphic team.
I first rewrote the cast, by making it more inclusive and interesting : The 4 scientists have personality archetypes that answer to one another and can create engaging situations.
Antoine, the character designer, worked with this base to give a body and a face to each of them.
Then, I used the initial situation of the mysterious murder of one character to build a whole narrative based off of current scientific discoveries.
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That gave us a plot revolving around a mission in total failure, where all 4 decided to clone themselves multiple times to simulate a quantum computer, but with actual people.
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I was inspired by a very bad movie named Cube² : Hypercube.
Since our game revolves around the relationships between the characters, I had to learn how to make dialogues.
Some of them have a heavy impact on the ending, while others help the player get clues and indications on the steps to solve the puzzles of the game.
I made a first tree on Twine, without the variables, to double-check that there were no dead ends and no loops, then integrated them in Unreal using a tool customized by our programmers.
From Twine
To Unreal
To the game
(! Sound !)
You can play the Twine version of one of them here : https://shouil.itch.io/cold-trust-dialoguetest (Placeholders for variables)
I also wrote the scripts for the cinematics of the game, then the artistic team worked with the cinematic designer to storyboard, film and integrate them.
Narrative Design
My main inspiration for pathing was Zero Escape : Zero Time Dilemma
This made me construct the progression around a system of chronological events and gating. With narrative branches that could call one another.
The game is played in chapters, with some of them containing choices that can make the story split into different narrative branches. Others are here for exposition and give the player some time to explore the levels looking for lore. We wanted to encourage them to replay chapters to get different outcomes.
Beatchart document of the whole game (clickable pdf)
I also made narrative bubble plans and interaction diagrams to help the level designer make his blocking and pacing. (Here, the computer interactions in the laboratory)
Game Design
In the early stages of development, together with another game designer, we decided on the mechanics of the game.
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Cold Trust doesn't have the ambition of revolutionizing the genre of narrative & investigation games, so we are using a lot of techniques that have been proved to be efficent.
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Items and puzzles are assembled or solved by interacting. There is no combination necessary in any type of inventory.
Each of the characters has a unique ability.
All of them are playable, but only one can be played by chapter, and chosen by the game.
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To make it all go together, I did all of the puzzle design. But as it is not one of my forte, they are very simple. (I also did the 2D placeholders.)
Walkthrough video of the vertical slice
QA Testing
For each build, each day, I was playtesting the levels multiple times to check on any loopholes, bugs, grammar mistakes, and communicated a list to the team, that usually constituted our work in the morning.
Improvement axis
We had difficiulties scoping the project and deciding on a part of the story that would best represent the content of the full game. Which made the Design team very unsure of a lot of decisions and resulted in a lack of features integrated in the vertical slice.
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In the end, the second part of the vertical slice feels rather empty, with a level design too big for the actions taking place and a sense of emergency we couldn't emphasize through the ambiance. Plus a lack of interactions and actual inderstanding of the character's possibilities.
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If I had to rework on Cold Trust, I would have asked for more feedback from other game designers and focused on making sure that the game has content.
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Yet, I am very proud of what I managed to accomplish with the story and hope to be able to craft even better games with amazing studios.
Bonus
We presented the game to a jury in the beginning of february. As part of this presentation, I talked about the story and the character related mecanics. (I'm the person seating with blue hair) Starts at 2:09:00
Here is the full video :