Archive of ‘Story Lab’ category
Darren playing Adam the spec ops and Dan playing Isabella the tactician.
We started our game at 9.36 and everything went well. Due to the sudden change of classroom, the limitation of space left us no choice but to narrate out the actions that we were meant to act out. Video logs and audio logs played smoothly without buffering, Stefan’s toy gun worked well and the players understood the game instructions well. If I were to say any disappointmens, I would say the limitation of time that caused the players not able to play the game leisurely, but they did enjoy the game after all, so I guess that’s fair enough. I would say it will turn out amazing if this were to create it in ‘Escape’ that kind of concept, with a room being divided by glass walls, and the players will be playing separately but able to see each other’s progress through the glass walls so they are on the same pace. Also, for the hacker’s labyrinth puzzle, it will be really cool if the labyrinth is created with live forms, and have the player to walk through and discover the codes. Lots of ideas, but due to the room space available, time and budget wise, we carried it out this way. I’m glad 😀
This blog will be the answer to Week 7 mid-semester blog post detailing the role, understanding of the project and its direction, and as the final reflection for the studio.
The narrative of the game goes like this: In the year 2030, the Raath (alien forces) invaded the Earth and war raged on between humanity and the Raath, and later humanity began to understand the battle was undefeatable. To prevent humanity from going totally annihilated, several members were selected to represent human race in order to negotiate a peace treaty between the two races. The Raath accepted and declared the cooperation between human race and the Raath would begin a new era of coexistence, but the real intention behind the signing of peace treaty was to have human as test subjects for the Raath to undergo genetic manipulation and experiment the power of mutated genes for the Raath to have more power to control over the Earth.
There are four main characters in this story: Isabella the tactician, Doctor Kuronoma, Gray the hacker and Adam the Spec ops. [Backstory] Isabella was captured in 2031 by the Raath for their experiments, the year when the agreement of peace treaty between two races had concluded. She was held in for 12 years and met Doctor Kuronoma, who was also captured in 2031 to be part of the Raath’s experiment team. He then started experimenting the usual procedures on her but she was the only one who withstood all the chemicals that were meant to wipe out the human race. Doctor Kuronoma escaped with Isabella but was captured in the end while he was letting Isabella escape.
Game flow: The game will start off with a video log by the Leader welcoming the players, the recruits then will walk into the hall room and introduce themselves and their departments. Each character (Tactician, Hacker and Spec ops) can only be performed by a player, thus, the players will have to decide which character to play upon.
- Isabella: As the tactician, the player is meant to find out the time and schedule of the Raath’s plan and stop them from carrying it out.
- Gray: As the hacker, the player will need to crack into the Raath’s system to decipher their passcodes and figure out the security passwords and codes to get into the base and prevent the Raath from doing anything.
- Adam: As the spec ops, the player will be doing most of the physical acts to figure out the location of the Raath’s operation
Noted that there are three stages and this is currently in the first stage, which is a trial for the players before they can be part of the Raath Rebellion team. (Players will have no time limit at this stage. Questions are allowed and hints will be given to help to crack the puzzles.)
Once the players have selected their preferable character, they will be given with 1st stage puzzles. Completion of stage one will then come after with a congratulatory video log by the leader and stage two puzzles (not necessary to be completed as this stage is the final trial puzzle before accepting the players to be officially a Raath Rebellion member). As the stage two puzzles go on, the leaders of the departments will then leave the room for a mission and Alex (supposedly a ghost character) gets called upon to leave too. Later then a video from the Raath gets played on the screen saying the HQ will soon be blown off. After the Raath’s video, the Leader appears back on screen to inform the players to contact Doctor Kuronoma. The tactician will be finding out what time will the explosives blow off and determine how much time do they have left, the hacker will crack into the system by figuring out the password and the spec ops will figure out the location of the bomb. Doctor Kuronoma acts as the key character as the players will guide him to disarm the bomb by using the walkie talkie that is placed somewhere in the corner of the room. There are two possible endings: if the players manage to solve the final puzzles in time, they can protect the HQ and win; if the players fail to solve the puzzles, they then fail to deactivate the bomb and they lose.
In terms of hints for the last puzzles,the spec ops will be using Raath language to figure out the location with the map they choose in the second stage puzzle (amount of Raath language hints won in first stage puzzle will determine the level of difficulty in the final puzzle). The hacker will be doing sudoku to figure out the password. As for the tactician, the player will receive a box containing Isabella and Doctor Kuronoma’s journals, a pencil, a mirror, and a map of the base, and the player is meant to figure out where the hints are hidden and figure out the time hidden within the box.
We did not use any digital and social media as one of our platforms, instead, we used video logs, audio logs, journal and physical objects like bullet gun to allow the game to be more effectively immersive. We added the idea of ‘agency’ into our game as the players are able to experience the actual feeling tension of time chasing with background sound effects when solving puzzles. I am very happy with my group’s performance as we started out with ideas all over the place, but we managed to merge them together and pulled them off well. Overall, I am glad that I have chosen Story Lab as my studio.
The picture below is the demonstration of the first stage puzzle of the tactician.
Solve the following puzzle and figure out the DATE of the latest experiment being conducted.
Second stage puzzle: Figure out the DATE of the placement of the bomb.
Questions and feedbacks are welcomed. Thank you 🙂
I had a very long day with my groupmates to play out each other’s puzzles. As I was in the uni since early morning, I went back to my apartment to have a short lunch break. Left my phone on silent mode in my bag and didn’t realize Farina called to ask me if I have matchsticks. I didn’t realize until I went back to meet up with them and found out Steven had gone to buy matchsticks when I already got them prepared (feeling very bad here). Wei Yun joined us and solved my matchsticks puzzle together with Steven and Farina (Stefan only joined us a while later as he’s got work shift). It was fun to see them solving the puzzles together and since Wei Yun solved the puzzles first, she gave out hints that were too direct and that actually caused Steven and me to think about the hints even more (though I knew the answer, but her hints literally got me confused LOL). As for Wei Yun’s puzzle, who’s in charged of the character Gray the Hacker, all of us besides Stefan had tried out on Monday.
We moved to a classroom when Stefan joined to rehearse the script and the actual procedures of the game. Not going to spoil the plot (game run is on Friday morning), our game involves video logs, audio logs, journals, shooting toy gun, digital sudoku, and digital labyrinth. Each of us takes a turn to try out Stefan’s first level puzzle since we’ve already done Wei Yun’s and mine (as according to the game flow). After completing the first stage, we then moved on to the second and last stage. We were trying to change the hints for the last puzzle of mine to make them clearer as the hints may seem hard to be relatable.
Puzzle of the day.
Our group had decided to use video logs, audio logs as one of our platforms to deliver the game’s backstory, instructions, rules etc., so we had arranged a meeting on last Friday to record some footages and audio for the project. We first went to our usual classroom for Story Lab in Building 13 but both rooms were used for other subjects. In the end, we went to Building 9 and found an empty room. But since we were told that there are students coming in at 12.30, we were left with only an hour to get everything done.
We wanted the Leader’s face not to be shown on the screen, giving off a sense of being a mysterious character, but also not a pitch black video which you can’t even tell if there’s anyone there, so I had Farina and Wei Yun to off the classroom’s main light and hold the phone’s torchlights behind Steven’s head and shoulder. This will create the glowing effect (as seen in the picture on the left) as the lights will only outline the shape of Steven’s head and shoulder (some lighting setup I had learned in Advanced Diploma).
We struggled a little bit for the first take as the effects did not come out well according to the way we wanted due to the lack of lightings. The effects would be so much clearer, cooler and more professional if we had a proper light to film with. Since that was not our main focus considering the whole project and also the lack of time for filming, we decided to go on with what we had and went for a second try. On the second take, I exchanged with Farina to be the grip from the cameraman and it turned out well despite the poor lighting.
So we practically didn’t do much in class on the last class of Story Lab. I sort of had a mixture of feelings, though. It’s like feeling happy because the semester is coming to an end, which indicates school break is coming up, and yet thinking back about the semester, I thought to myself what have I learned, what have I done and how well did I do for this studio. Not complaining or giving a piece of my mind about Story Lab but the question rather targets myself. I really love Story Lab and I like the outline of the studio, just that have I been a good student throughout the semester for Story Lab or not. Since we’re in week 12 and we are all busy preparing for our upcoming major group project, our last class was used to do our own work (though I would have loved it if it ended with an interactive talk or activity haha).
Each of us in our group showed the stage of how far we have gotten in creating the puzzles and we still did not have a fixed narrative (the plot has been confirmed a week ago). Steven told us that he would get the script written out on Friday as we had scheduled for a meet up to film for our audio and video logs. Farina and I also decided to create a journal for Isabella as well instead of just having Doctor Kuronoma’s journal. As for my puzzles, I am still going through a tough time in thinking about the ways to rephrase my instructions to prevent misunderstanding of the instructions of the puzzles.
⇒ One of the welcome messages to greet the players before they start the puzzles.
I recently came across a South Korean reality TV show called The Genius broadcasted by a cable channel called tvN. It started airing in 2013 with 4 seasons, having 12 episodes and 13 contestants each season. Each episode will have the contestants to compete together in the main match, and will end the episode by eliminating one among the two players who are selected to play a death match, and the last man standing will be the champion of the season. Each contestant is meant to gather garnets to survive each episode, and towards the final episode, the garnets will be granted as prize money. The Genius started off with The Genius: Rules of the Game, The Genius: Rule Breaker, The Genius: Black Garnet and ended with The Genius: Grand Final, which gathers 13 contestants among the first three seasons.
The matches being played require the players to be observant, tactical, have leadership skills and more. The show is very interesting as each player has different kind of charzcter and personality in terms of game playing or gather other contestants to form a group to win the game and survive. It has no rules and regulations when it comes to betrayal, cheating, stealing or bargaining between players (e.g. transfer of garnets between players to win the match), and hence it will result in unexpected plot twist and that results in the viewers to have agency when watching the show.
For example, in season 3 The Genius: Black Garnet episode 10, two players faced off each other at the death match playing the Monorail Game. Each player is meant to create a monorail that cannot be completed to eliminate the other contestant. The puzzle had a fixed start and the players will lose the game if one cannot complete the puzzle. Winner will be determined when one calls out ‘Impossible’. The players can only place one or two puzzles at the same time to create the monorail (two puzzles cannot be seperated when being placed). While watching the game, the male player was seen to have lost the game but he placed another two puzzles to continue the rail. Later his intention was reveled to disrupt the opponent’s mind and lead the opponent to continue on the monorail that cannot be completed, and that gave him a chance to call out ‘Impossible’. This death match requires mind-reading skill, reverse psychological thinking, oberserving skill and tactical planning skill. After watching the entire series, it really gave me a lot of ideas in terms pf creating puzzles for my upcoming group project which my group have decided to develop it into a game. I personally love this show a lot because it is really well developed, either the player’s character or the plot twist or the games. Truly reccommend this show. For those who enjoy watching Liar Game, it is a must to watch this!
The images below show the posters of The Genius season 3 and 4.
P.S. The winner in the death match is the champion of season 3 and the final season.
I had an informal presentation with my group in the class to share our progression of our project to the class. My group mates are in charged of designing the layout of the headquarter, puzzles for the characters, the plot of the narratives etc. After we did our presentation, Dan questioned us the effects of not able to solve the puzzles for the first two stages. As we had not thought about it, we discussed that instead of having two stages of puzzles that are necessary to be solved, we decided to disregard stage two puzzles. Hence, stage one puzzles will need to be solved (Farina will be helping the players by providing hints until the puzzles are solved), and the Raath’s video log message will interfere the Raath Rebellion headquarter in the midst of the players solving stage two puzzles.
Farina and I were thinking to have Isabella’s journal to be one of the hints or not, and we are in the middle of creating Doctor Kuronoma’s journal. Farina basically created the narrative for Dr. Kuronoma’s journal and I will be creating puzzles with the journal as the hints. I’m still in the middle of rephrasing the instructions for the first stage as the instructions are rather unclear and causes confusion. These are the feedbacks I got from a lot of people. As for the second puzzle, since it is not necessary to be solved, I just somehow created it with mathsticks and this puzzle will lead to the date of the placement of the bomb.
Puzzle of the day
Use 6 matchsticks to form 6 triangles. Enjoy 🙂
We had a 2-hour meeting and finally concluded the narrative. The plot will start off with the leader of Raath Rebellion welcoming the new members with a video log and later each head members of different departments will then introduce themselves and deliver each trial missions for the players to complete. After the players complete the trial puzzles, they then will reach the second level of trial and will be reported that the Raath has planted an explosive in the headquarter of Raath Rebellion. The mission for the players is to figure out the location of the bomb and the time the bomb explodes. As we were advised by the guest lecturers that we may have a set ending but is allowed to have slight changes in it. In conclusion, the narrative will have three different stages of puzzles to be solved to complete the mission.
There are a lot of ideas for the puzzles related to Isabella the tactician of the group, btu due to the undecided narrative and endings, the puzzles cannot be fully developed. It will be easier as we have finally concluded the narrative. I have created different puzzles with research and allow the members to try out and discuss about the relevancy and difficulty of the puzzles. As we were having another story lab class on the next day, puzzles creating members will have to come up with each own puzzles and finalize the ending of the narrative. We also need to talk about the relevancy between the puzzles and the narrative. 
This is the final logo for the Raath Rebellion.
Liar Game is a Japanese manga originally created by Shinobu Kaitani in 2005. It is later being broadcasted as a TV series under the same name in 2007, running 11 episodes. A sequel Liar Game: Season 2 was produced and released in 2009. Two live action films are produced: Liar Game: The Final Stage in 2010 and Liar Game: Reborn in 2012. A Korean TV Series has also adapted the Japanese Season 1’s plot under the same name Liar Game. Liar Game is widely popular even until today with its mysterious and quirky narrative. So what is Liar Game?
Liar Game talks about an innocent and naive high school girl, Nao Kanzaki receives a bag of 100 million yen one day and is announced to be the last participant of a fictional reality TV show named Liar Game Tournament. The objective of this fictional show is to provoke the contestants desire to win an unbelievable amount of money and there are no rules to stop them from cheating or lying or stealing from other contestants, but on the other hand, the losers will have to pay off an unbearable amount of debt for their losses. As Nao is cheated by her high school teacher in the first round, she looks for the con man named Shinichi Akiyama for help. They win the first round of game and as Shinichi tries to convince Nao to leave the show, he realizes that the show actually has darker intentions and decides to help the Nao and the other contestants by going through different games with increasing difficulties.
Since I am in charged in creating one of the puzzles, I though watching this show will help in creating puzzles as it involves in different genres of games like role playing game, mind reading game, tactician game, and etc. For example, towards the mid part of the story of the Korean version, there is a game which involves the contestants to figure out the majority of Yes or No, and the losers will be the ones who cannot figure out correctly and get eliminated from the game. It involves in observing, thinking and planning skills in order to win the game. The show is truly inspiring and interesting, and it also has a very good progression in terms of the narrative and character development.
Truly recommend this show, it is a MUST watch.
After having a few meetings about our upcoming project, we decided to make in into an episodic game. So basically the rough narrative of episode one will have The Resistance to recruit trainees, and the players will be playing the trainees role. The players will be greeted by a welcome video log for joining the resistance team. A senior Resistance member will be in the video log passing the training mission for the players. This is the stage where the players will be presented with simple tutorial puzzles as we decided to have a tutorial level for the players to have a slight idea of different criteria needed for different characters.
After the tutorial stage, the narrative continues with the Raath successfully infiltrating the headquarter of the Resistance, and the trainees will find out that the Raath has planted a bomb in a room in the headquarter (room yet to be confirmed), and so the game starts with the players working together to find out where the bomb is and disarm the bomb. As the others are working on posters and a lot more, I will be in charge of creating a list of tactician puzzles for Isabella the Brain and Stefan will be creating spec ops puzzles. Nurfarina is in charge of creating a layout of the Resistance’s headquarter to allow the puzzles to fit the game better. The plot of the story has not been decided so we have to search for different ideas for the plot and puzzles to fit in with other puzzles.