Game Dev Diary
There is A LOT of stuff out there that deals Oneiroi is an illustrated narrative game with dreams. One of my favourite series of in which players are the Dreamer, an graphic novels is The Sandman, written by Neil insomniac dealing with her inner Gaiman and featuring covers by Dave McKean, demons while she sleeps. Different who is an inspiration for my work. I knew choices take them on a branching path about Morpheus and some of the mythology and into different dream worlds, where around the deity, so I started to delve deeper they meet the Oneiroi, children of the into the mythology. This research was not night, messengers of the gods and meant to result in a historically (or rather, personifications of dreams. They may mythologically) accurate game, but to serve as help the Dreamer tackle your fears and inspiration on which to base my personal anxieties… Or plunge deeper into them. interpretation of the subject matter. As should
This personal game combines words become apparent, I took many liberties with and images to create a story with surreal the myths. elements. Using mythology, metaphors As often happens with very old texts, This is the game dev diary of my game Oneiroi. Here you will find some insights into the game and visual art, the main character’s battle with depression and anxiety are information is scarce and often confused. design and the production process that resulted in this illustrated narrative game. I always manifested on the story and discovered Oneiroi and Somnia are both used to refer to find it enjoyable when other game designers let others take a peek behind the curtain into by the player as they make choices and dreams, and the personifications of dreams are their process, so here’s mine. navigate the world. sometimes said to be the children of Somnus / Hypnos (sleep) or Nyx (night). The siblings If you’d like to get in touch to know more, you can find my contact information and links in The idea for this game started with me Morpheus, Phobetor / Icelus, and Phantasos the last page of this document. Enjoy! thinking how to make a game inspired are named by the Latin poet Ovid in by my experiences with insomnia. Metamorphoses. They are the only named
Beyond physical tiredness, your Oneiroi of many, the most prominent of what perception and interpretation of Sofia Romualdo amounts to a thousand personifications of things changes too. Being awake and dreams. They were said to be sent by the gods June 2020 dreaming starts to look the same as messengers, appearing to people in their (something I tried to portray with the sleep. London, UK Morpheus dream, along with the dream-within-a-dream phenomenon and lucid dreaming).
Clockwise:
Kabeiroi – location-based immersive experience by Punchdrunk
Erica – cinematic videogame by Flavourworks
Pan’s Labyrinth – film directed by Guillermo del Toro
The Sandman – graphic novels series written by Neil Gaiman, covers by Dave McKean
The Metamorphoses – stories by Ovid
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog – painting by Caspar David Friedrich
Enter Sandman – song by Metallica
Inception – film directed by Christopher Nolan
The main gameplay mechanics are: If the player decides to take a sleeping pill
Different choices lead players towards on the first night, they get a vivid dream
different pathways. where they are visited by Phantasos, who
The key choice that influences what tries to seduce them with the promise of a
dream the player visits is the decision carefree (but ultimately empty) existence.
of whether to take the sleeping pills or If they wait until the second night to take
not, and how much dosage to ingest. a sleeping pill, they are plunged into a nightmare where they are hunted by Players cannot backtrack on a choice, Phobetor, who tries to terrify them into and can only visit one dream per playthrough. If they would like to submission.
discover a different dream, they have to If they take only half a pill on the second
play the game again and make different night, they are visited by Morpheus in a
choices. dream within a dream (which initially looks
a lot like reality). This is the only dream in
which they get an explanation of the Real insomnia feels like a lack of agency: you mythological undercurrent of the story, don’t choose to become an insomniac. Often, you which is never confirmed to be true or desperately want to fall asleep, but cannot. false. Sleeping pills are used to give your body and mind a break by forcing you to go to sleep (and even That ambiguity was deliberate. I like then they might not work). The solution for stories in which the magic is hinted at, but which never confirm what is real and what insomnia is elusive and, in many cases, almost is not. impossible to figure out. There is too much at play for easy fixes. Each playthrough was designed to take
I wanted the player to have some agency about 15 minutes. At each ending scene, I regarding when to fall asleep and, subsequently, added the option to play again, to what dream they end up in. In the end, I chose to encourage players to explore different The Dreamer is an insomniac. The player first meets her as she wakes up from a restless options and delve deeper into the story simplify the choice down to whether or not they night, during which she slept very little and had unsettling dreams she wishes she could took the sleeping pills, and when they chose to do with each playthrough. remember. All that is left is a vague feeling of unease and impending doom. She reflects that. on her longing for a good nights sleep and wishes she could remember her dreams.
The Dreamer is fighting her mental health issues, which all manifest in her dreams and nightmares. It might be her subconscious sending messages to herself, using different symbols and metaphors depending on the type of dream, or they might be actual messages
from the gods – this is never confirmed or denied, but always implied.
Each playthrough follows 3 arcs.
1. Awake: from the time the Dreamer wakes up until she goes to sleep. a. Includes whatever it takes for the player to get her to that point. She might spend
her day in bed, or get up and read, drink tea in the balcony, have a shower. b. It is possible for her to stay awake for 3 days (if the player decides not to take pills), after which she has no choice but to take a sleeping pill and have a dreamless sleep.
2. Dream State: from the time the Dreamer falls asleep until she wakes up.
a. Once the player decides to take the pill (either the full dosage or only half), the Dreamer goes to sleep. b. Depending on how long she’s been awake for and the pill dosage, she will go into a different dream. c. These dreams come from different “messengers” – Phobetor, Phantasus or Morpheus – and have different aesthetics. They are manifestations of some sort of anxiety the Dreamer has.
3. The End: waking up and reacting to the dream, or being consumed by the dream. a. Similar scene no matter what dream she’s had, with slight variations. b. Reflection and implication that tomorrow this may happen all over again. c. Decision to face issues and enact change. d. Or relinquishing control to the dream.
The Dreamer
Main character and playable character. The player drives the story forward and controls her actions by making choices. A woman in her early thirties. Insomniac. Unemployed or furloughed due to the lockdown. Lives alone. Perpetual dark circles under her eyes. Dresses simply. The sort of quiet strength that sensitive people develop over time and experience. Depressed but determined to not lose her grip on life.
The Oneiroi
Children of the night and sleep, immortals who travelled through dreams appearing as certain types of images, the Greek mythology personifications of dreams.
The Oneiroi are:
• Morpheus: The Sandman. Most powerful of the Oneiroi.
o Realistic dreams. o Appears as a human, with stars and wings. o Wants to guide the Dreamer, help her regain control instead of relinquishing it to Phobetor or Phantasos, but does so without any sense of empathy or warmth.
• Phobetor: The Beast. o Nightmares. Sends messages using beasts, birds and serpents, monsters. o Appears as wild animals, often as lions and bears. o Desires to create chaos and suffering in order to subdue humans. Seeks to amplify the Dreamer’s anxieties and trap her forever inside her own fears and suffering.
• Phantasos: The Fantasy. o Surreal prophetic dreams. Sends messages using items made of the elements earth, rock, water and wood. o Appears as a benevolent, colourful animal. o Desires to seduce the Dreamer by engulfing her in a cloud of euphoria and drawing her attention away from her anxieties, but not actually helping her to deal with them. All they do is draw the Dreamer further away from reality until she is completely disconnected.
I decided that each “level” of the game should have a distinct aesthetic identity, with different dreams and awake states correspond to different levels. They vary in:
• colours (from realistic to highly saturated, glitchy, monochromatic)
• depth of field
• textures (light leaks, paint, grain, glitches)
• level of realism (dreams have warped perspectives and object sizes)
• environment (empty apartment, lush forest, underwater, decayed / destroyed places) Some examples of reference photos, as well as before and after shots. • symbols (the digital watch is the “awake” token; wings and birds are repeating motifs; different dreams make use of different symbols related to each Oneiroi) To take the photos, I used my Canon 5D Mark II, which I’ve had since my years working as a professional photographer (to pay for my master’s degree). I used two lenses: the Canon EF 50mm f1.4 for the awake photos, and the Canon EF 17-40mm F4 for the self-portraits to be used in The aspect ratio of 16:9 stays the same throughout the game to mimic a cinematic look. photomanipulations.
I used Adobe Photoshop for all the editing and photomanipulations.
I calculated about half an hour to create each image in Photoshop (the photos took less time than the photomanipulations, but the manipulations required A LOT of experimenting until the look was
right), plus about 15 minutes to take each photograph (averaging time with scouting, arriving at the
location, setting up, repeating until the shot was right). This amounted to about 60 hours of Photoshop and 30 hours of photography, which corresponds to just over 11 days of working hours. Since I was working on this project alongside paid work, it took me 3 weeks (15 days) in total to create the artwork for this game.
Building the game in Unity (both the Windows and Mac versions) took a total of 2 days. Playtesting (which was done by my friends) and subsequent tweaking took one day.
The rest of the time was spent on admin (including planning, creating and keeping production documents up to date, keeping track of tasks and time spent) and promotion (mostly spreading the word on social media and adding the game to different websites).
In total, the project took 6 weeks from start to completion.
My initial estimates for working on this game were for it to take 4 weeks total. However, this estimate was scrapped as halfway through I got selected to work on an R&D project with Exit Productions (the objective was to create an immersive gaming experience that could be played remotely. We made Jury Duty, and you can read about the result on my website – link at the end of this document). As this was paid work, it took precedence over personal work, and it delayed the timeline for this project for about 2 weeks.
The planning process, during which I developed the concept, researched the subject matter and created the initial game design document, took about a week. I was plotting the choices and consequences as I developed the story, the different dreams and corresponding endings. I then started working on the writing, which took another week.
Because I knew I wanted to accompany each scene with an illustration, I had to keep the scene count relatively low, be economical and optimise the number of scenes versus the most effective way to tell Example of a sprint in Jira. the story. In the end, I had a total of 120 scenes.
I used Twine to prototype the narrative design and build the storylines. You can see the overall structure in the Story section of this document.
The actual game design was made in Unity using Fungus. Initially, I had planned on using Cradle to import the story from Twine and build upon that, but unfortunately I couldn’t get the tool to work. In the end I rebuilt the narrative and added the interactions with Fungus as a scripting tool, then added the visuals as backgrounds.
As for production tools, I used Jira, Google Docs and Google Sheets to keep track of tasks, progress, time, budget and milestones.
I made two versions of the game, one for Windows and other for MacOS.
The game was published on itch.io and is free to download and play.
Oneiroi was largely a personal solo project. I was its game designer, narrative designer/writer, and photographer/artist. But games are, more often than not, the result of collective effort, and this was no exception.
I had help from my assistant photographer, Eric Stein, to take some of the photos. I also used stock photos from various photographers at Envato Elements / Twenty20 for the photomanipulations.
The background song is from Wow Sounds’ Unity Asset Store.
Links: https://elements.envato.com/ https://wowsound.com/
A note on the background for this project. As I explained in the section dedicated to Oneiroi is a game that I made entirely during scheduling and production, my strategy was the Covid-19 lockdown in London, which as of to treat this project exactly as I would in a the date I’m writing this is starting to lift. professional environment, creating game design and production documentation, using The aim for this project was for me to create something during the lockdown which tools such as Jira and Google Docs to organise I had the idea of making a game exploring the spoke to my personal experience and focused on dreams, a topic I’ve wanted to my workflow, and giving myself deadlines. topics of insomnia and dreams for a while, and delve into for some time. I wanted to apply my photography and art skills at the this became even more interesting to me as same as I developed my writing and narrative design skills, as well as experiment many people (myself included) reported Some of the photos I took for the game use with game design tools such as Twine and Fungus. having more vivid dreams during the London as a backdrop. These were the last lockdown. The feelings of loneliness or images to be created for the game, as they The game has been well received so far, with various people reaching out to say how enforced close socialisation that everyone required being outside without a mask. much they enjoyed it, and to share their own interpretations of the game. This was experiencing also found their way into interpretation personal to each player, more than anything, makes me feel that the the game. game is a success. I love playing with ambiguity in storytelling, and I’m glad that came In the UK, we were allowed to be outside for across in Oneiroi. an hour every day for exercise, so I used that
As many of us found out, it’s not easy being hour as a scouting opportunity to explore That’s it from me! Hope you enjoyed this game dev diary. If you’d like to download productive during a lockdown. In my case, the locations around my house, and figure out the the game or reach out on social media, here are the links. Thanks for reading! events coincided with the games company times of day when they were empty. This that I worked for closing down – in a strange allowed me and my assistant photographer to coincidence, our last day was when the take photos without breaking social lockdown started in the UK. I went from being distancing. really busy working with a team to working by myself at home with no clear deadlines.
Dreams and nightmares, sleep and insomnia.
Links
My website: https://www.sofiaromualdo.com/
Download Oneiroi: https://auralis.itch.io/oneiroi
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AuraliSofia
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/auralisofia/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sofiaromualdo/