Level Design - 'Stranded'
Girl Scouts!
June 2017 - July 2017
DESIGN DOCUMENT
GAME
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A trio of girl scouts must embark on a rescue mission, deep in the forest. Together, they will confront foes, make new friends, and grow tighter bongs with one another, all in an effort to abide by the Girl Scout code.
Girl Scouts! is a personal project where I was prototyping dialogue pop-ups and narrative in Unreal Engine 4.
Below is a 5 minute walk-through of the introduction scene.
Learning Unreal4
One of the most challenging parts of this project was learning Unreal4 from the ground up. Before this, I had only opened UE4 for a cursory glance and mess-around with the materials, only to retreat back to the seemingly easier Unity.
After a few days of trial and error and many, many, many video tutorials, I think I got the swing of things. My goal for the project was to communicate a narrative I had written down (or at least, communicate the start of the story) in an easy-enough form for the player to go through and say, "Oh cool, this is what I have to do."
To achieve this, I spent a majority of my time learning the Widgets Blueprint tool. Here, I transferred the dialogue from paper to engine, using colour-coded text and images to indicate to the player who is talking at any given time.
Learning the cinematics machine in UE4 was another process I actually thoroughly enjoyed. Setting up anchor points for the camera to move to, time delays, that text scroll at the start - all of which were fascinating to learn about and effectively used to help communicate the narrative.
Writing a Narrative
The Girl Scouts! narrative is influenced by my favourite films and TV shows growing up - slasher flicks like 'Scream' and 'Friday the 13th: Part 2,' to girl-power hits 'Clueless' and 'Legally Blonde,' to (especially) the classic show 'Golden Girls.'
I love dissecting every trope and stereotype used in these films, understanding what makes them work (and what makes them not work), sometimes subverting it, but a majority of the time using it so earnestly for my own nostalgic wants. So that's exactly what I did in this narrative.
Throughout the story, the trio of Girl Scouts (specifically the 'Movie Buff' Scout) continually reference the 'Hero's Adventure' along their journey, recognising certain beats from their own media they consume. I've based the three Girl Scouts on real-life figures in pop culture and references, to better help myself understand who they would be if they were real, and I think it helps the player understand that character more so.
