The menu screen of the game gives you something you can scan with your phone in order to get the game background story on AR. A 12 year old boy, Romaine, is in a car with his grandmother who is trying to explain something to him. The car is leaking a lot of oil. Because of her old age, she explains rather slowly and he is losing his patience. He is in the middle of complaining, when a passerby throws a cigarette and their car catches fire. While he is airborne, time slows down, and he sees the game images flashing through his eyes. Then the user is prompted to go into the game. 

The idea is that the game mechanics will be an exploration of time. The user can only come to observe and understand the game’s puzzles if they stand still. Every puzzle will unlock another answer or observation as a response to the grandma’s story. For now, I am thinking that the unlocked answers will be scannable for the user to see in their phone. The AR story should take prevalence over the game experience, i.e. the game experience is an elaboration of the concepts evidenced in the story. The AR story itself will be an exploration of the AR medium and what it can bring to comics…

In the beginning of the game, the user comes across a little pig that in some puzzles will transform into a more human version of itself. This will be the second player, who will be instrumental for some puzzles and will have some added abilities. At the end of the game, the boy meets his grandmother and they walk away together in the forest.

Here is a simple prototype I made in Unity. I split the “board” into four distinct quadrants. Each quadrant will be united through a linear stroll between trees and each quadrant will have a different key to the puzzles.

Here is a demonstration of the way time is affected. There is a script which accesses the animation controller and sets its speed to 0 once the player is moving, and to 1 once the player is still. There might be an added feature later on where each second the player stands still, there is an added speed to the animation (for example, 1 second still, 1.5 speed; 2 seconds still, 2 speed, etc.).

In another quadrant, the characters are controlled separately and have to strategically be placed because once you go back to the center, the distance set will be preserved. This will be useful for the puzzles.

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