Polymer Reef aims to be more than an exploration game and more than entertained adventures, our goal is to transmit to the players a warning about a real world issue: The plastic pollution.
Plastic is a substance the earth cannot digest.
Embark on an adventure and help an axolotl find his path after his habitat has been destroyed by plastic pollution by exploring reefs and caves, and crossing the vast ocean in search of a new home. You will need to hunt and hide in order to survive, all the while maturing and gaining experience from an unfair environment and a journey triggered by circumstances beyond your control.
The player will be motivated by the experience of a different narrative and fun gameplay combination that will challenge the player’s ability to navigate and explore the mysteries of the underwater world. Direct feedback, continuously challenges and clear goals will help us to retain the player focus. Besides that all the game dynamics will have in consideration the Maslow hierarchy of needs, specially moral security and self-realization through morality.
We intend our game to be a unique player experience; by making it a first-person adventure, we place the player in the skin of the character, interacting more directly with the scenery and the wildlife. Aesthetically, we will attempt to distinguish the game from similar titles through a minimalistic yet beautiful artwork, with some emphasis on color but relatively simple geometry. We will also try to make clever use of lighting to great effect, by not only making its manipulation part of the gameplay mechanics, as well use it to create or change the ambience of the world. We intend that the interface (menus, HUDs, etc) be as reduced and simplistic as possible, so as to get out of the player's way and keep the experience as immersive as possible.
Since our game is a form of raising awareness for a global problem in our planet, we plan to target all audiences, not limiting age ranges, genders, etc. However the game will be more appealing for people that enjoy adventure style games.
We will follow the PEGI 7 and ESRB Everyone ratings.
This game fits in the serious adventure game genre.
Our primary platform target will be Windows. However we will try to make the game available for other PC platforms like Linux and MacOS, with realistic hardware configurations.
To carry out a competitive analysis we looked for, in the market, some products that we think are somehow similar to the game that we are developing. The title that most impressed us and most closely resembles our purpose is undoubtedly "Abzu": a serene and meditative game of underwater journey/exploration. Despite the differences in the part of the narrative, the artistic style and mechanics involved is quite close to what we want as a final result. Another similar underwater exploration game we found was the "Song of the Deep". In this game the player controls a young girl who makes an improvised submarine to look for her father who disappeared during the fishery. Although the artistic style is a bit different from the previous one, the adventure and the discovery that we want present in our game is very well achieved soon is something that we can consider. Besides both "Abzu" and "Song of the deep” being the most similar games comparing to ours, we think that we will distinguish our game quite a lot from the chosen narrative. Besides these titles we observe others that although they are games of subaquatic environment, they are also quite different in the artistic style and navigation mechanics, as well as in the part of the narrative that we intend as final result:
ABZU -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2G54w8H4oM
Song of the deep -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EYlsCUIrf8
Journey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61DZC-60x20
Subnautica -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtP8r8nRfko
Depth -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-H-tcpo5pE
Diluvion -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5ogkiqEEsk
FarSky -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YamUf5o-Mrc
The main goal of our game relates to its moral component which aims to alert the players for a real world problem, namely the plastic pollution in rivers, lakes and oceans. We pretend to achieve that moral impact with two technics: A cyclic failure in the game’s condition victory: The player is doomed to fail in order to intensify the moral impact of the game. This failure will be hinted to the user by the replaying of the intro scene now in the eyes of the son of the actual player. Contrasting very beautiful environments with very dirty and plastic polluted environments.
Other than that, we aim for a pleasant experience during the adventurous, provided by challenging puzzles and beautiful scenarios.
Afonso Pinto up201503316@fe.up.pt
Ana Santos up200700742@fe.up.pt
Leonardo Capozzi up201503708@fe.up.pt
Ricardo Carvalho up201503717@fe.up.pt
Ricardo Santos up201503716@fe.up.pt
Tomás Oliveira up201504746@fe.up.pt