My aim for my GAM230 submission is to create a simple proof of concept showcasing the core experience of what the fundamental gameplay experience of Sycamore Point would be. This will involve the moving of items around an aesthetically calming 2D isometric environment. It will ideally involve mostly complete assets and simple but functional gameplay mechanics, with a witchy aesthetic and vibe to flavour.

This project is also in part being used to help me fill in the gaps in my game dev knowledge, specifically by developing useful and required industry skills I need that aren't up to scratch. In particular I aim to improve my aptitude for C# coding in Unity to a higher and more useable level, as well as developing project- and time-management skills that I've struggled to get a grip on throughout my education. 

Being weaker in these areas has proven problematic in  past projects, in particular when working in a development team, and so I will be using this project to further my capability towards in-engine development and better understand what strategies can help me work effectively - this is of particular pertinence as this is the first project I worked on after receiving a prescription for ADHD medication, and will therefore help me understand how that affects my approach to work as well as giving me the opportunity to identify and refine the strategies I will need to employ when working in industry.

My research involved several, very different categories: with the project idea being so specific and niche, I was careful to do as much reading as I could to best approach development later.

Inspirational Games

First, I looked at the current market of similar games. My initial inspiration for this project came from the success of Unpacking (Witch Beam, 2021) and its ingrained sense of nostalgia. The subtly emotive nature of this game made me wonder what the applications of similar environments could be to try and achieve beneficial effects. Nostalgia can be a good feeling, but I wanted to create something more practically beneficial for the present. Unpacking also heavily inspired the visual style of Sycamore Point, at first, as my initial idea was to create something with a similar soft pixelart aesthetic.

Looking elsewhere brought me to study-focused games, in particular Chill Corner (Low-Hi Tech, 2021) and Virtual Cottage (DU&I, 2020) - thanks to Alise Cukova from my course for the recommendation on the latter. These games are directly aimed at promoting study by rewarding time spent; in Chill Corner the player earns currency by spending time in the game, and they may assign tasks with timers to allow them to keep track of time spent. There is thematic and aesthetic focus on study, and the game then allows the player to decorate a small room using the earned currency to buy items. Virtual Cottage, by comparison, is much more of a "stopwatch" - the game prompts the player immediately to assign a task for a number of minutes, then will play ambient sounds and music while the timer ticks down. There is minimal customisation, as it allows the player to simply choose the whether, toggle a pet, toggle the fireplace, and skip the song. I found both of these games had very good control of atmosphere, but the focus on study wasn't where I wanted to take my project - mine would be much less directed, as I found while using these programs that if the time wasn't spent doing what was assigned there was an almost built-in sense of guilt which I didn't want to recreate in Sycamore.

It was at this stage in my research that I decided where to look for the soundtrack - lo-fi is a common but effective sound that a number of games like these employ to evoke the sense of calm characteristic of the genre. I decided this was something to replicate, as the focus of developing Sycamore Point was not to get good at making new music, and not only does lo-fi serve the atmosphere I'm creating effectively, but it is easy to find a variety of different royalty-free tracks to enable me to freely experiment with the sound of the game.

These three games greatly informed the direction I wanted to take Sycamore Point in, however - I learned a lot about how to approach atmosphere, and the calming effects of simple sound cues, and they each helped me refine the niche in the market I could fill with this project as well as consolidating my decision to pursue an isometric environment. 

Stepping into Witchcraft

I knew I wanted to explore witchcraft in my game from the start. Traditional and modern practices have been an interest of mine for a while, alongside associated gothic and "cottagecore" aesthetic trends that play into my own preferences. With this in mind I wanted to create a product that could give a reasonably accurate perspective on modern practices of witchcraft, which required research into such practices. I knew I didn't want to provide an insensitive depiction of practices and beliefs that many people around the world follow.

With help from Dr Howard I found some resources through which I could learn more, those being Traditional Witchcraft: A Cornish Book of Ways (Gemma Gary, 2008) and Children of Cain (Michael Howard, 2011). What I took from these books, as well as further research involving online creators and the wider community, was the strong link to nature and the earth that these practices have, as well as notes on ritual circles. The latter in particular helped me inform the visual structure of the room I was creating. Rituals and practices described often seemed to focus on attention to detail and combining ingredients for personal effects, things which lend themselves nicely to slow and methodical gameplay. An example of this that particularly caught my attention was the practice of drawing a circle and bringing in that which a practitioner would hold close, and keeping away that which they want to be protected from. This is something I could definitely incorporate as the intention behind this ritual is heavily symbolic, with paper writings and drawings often considered suitable symbolic representations of real world objects and ideas.

My goal at this stage was to incorporate genuine ritual practices into my project as faithfully as I could, though it would be explicit that I wasn't selling these as functional replacements for real-world ritual - I don't know enough about the effects to speak to anything more than the calming nature of the activities I would include, rather than the proposed spiritual effects of the rituals when performed in reality. A release of Sycamore Point could be advertised to help those with a harder financial situation attain some of the mental benefits of behaviours through the lens of witchcraft, however, as materials can often be expensive and rituals focused around re-centring oneself and meditation could be reasonably incorporated.

Considering Mental Health

With rituals in mind I looked further into mental health and the ways it can be managed day to day. I'm aware of the tendency of those with mental health issues, be it mental illness or neuro-divergent conditions, to adopt ritualistic and repetitive behaviours as a form of self-regulation. It is well-known that these behaviours can ease conditions like anxiety, and the link to literal ritual practices is well documented. A study by Boyer and Liénard (2006) is a well-regarded example that proposed that the benefits of these behaviours were to do with an increase in what is referred to by the study as cognitive load, roughly meaning that by adding more for the brain to pay attention to, less attention is paid to anxious feelings. This seemed to be focused particularly on moment-to-moment ritualistic behaviours like leg bouncing or rubbing one's hands together, which alluded to the stim behaviours often associated with neuro-divergent conditions (e.g. autism and AD[H]D). The self-regulatory benefits of stimming for neuro-divergent individuals cannot be understated, and it was an important element to draw from the study as I personally deal with similar conditions myself and would certainly conduct my project through that lens; accessibility is important to me either way but with the particular emphasis on stress relief that is of particular importance to this project.

A different study (Hobson, 2017) analysed the relationship between day-to-day ritual behaviours, in particular those with religious or spiritual purpose, and the positive regulatory effects these can have on general emotional state, performance goal states and social connection to others. I found this study to be more useful, personally, given its wider focus on rituals as part of lifestyle and the consideration of the spiritual, as opposed to the heavier focus on momentary self-regulatory behaviours of Boyer and Liénard's study. The focus on dedicated ritual behaviour is more relevant to my project due to my focus on the benefits to day-to-day life rather than in the moment self regulation. The focus on the effects of regular daily behaviours, both positive and negative, very much informed the types of activity I can consider incorporating into gameplay and whether they would suit the atmospheric and mentally relaxing vibe I am trying to achieve - as the project outline describes escapism from the stress of life, I want to ensure that the activities involved in the game can in no way become sources of stress themselves or something to be won or lost; the capacity to lose is not something I am looking to incorporate.

To summarise, my research into the effects of ritual behaviours on stress levels and overall mental health, and the complex relationship that exists there, proved that I need to be considerate with the gameplay I use to achieve the calming effect, as rituals can have benefits similar to that of meditative practices, but aren't in and of themselves inherently beneficial if the task at hand becomes itself a point of stress.

Defining and Refining Visual Style

My initial stylistic inspiration with particular regards to the project development came from digital art I saw on Instagram by Simone Ferriero (@simz.art) - her series surrounding the day to day of various witches in a modern setting particularly caught my attention as it drew on aesthetic themes I already find interesting. The visual similarities of this work to Kiki's Delivery Service (Studio Ghibli, 1989) also helped me confirm my intent to pursue it as thematic inspiration, as I watched that again during the first week of the GAM230 module and it still remains favourite of mine. As such I went looking for further sources from which I could develop my approach to the "modern traditional witch" aesthetic theme. This is also what ultimately resulted in my initial commitment to pay homage to the practices of modern traditional witches in the real world, though I was careful in my research into art style and into that belief system not to conflate the cliché of fictional representations with the reality of the practice. 

The other primary stylistic influence was Unpacking, the immense popularity of which through 2021 definitely impacting my decision to emulate the presentation as an isometric room-decoration sim. It also informed my initial ideas surrounding how I would create the art assets for Sycamore, which evident in my statement of intent where I detail the use of a soft pixel art style derivative of Unpacking's vibe and that of numerous other indie titles. This immediate inclination towards a pixel style was later reinforced by the discovery of Witchbrook (Chucklefish, undated), an upcoming game from the developer of Stardew Valley (Chucklefish, 2016) focusing on a school for witches.

I ultimately abandoned the pixel style in favour of digital drawing, after receiving important feedback that incorporating a pixel art style could undermine the uniqueness of Sycamore and its distinctiveness from any other pixel indie game, as well as potentially removing some of my personality from the project. This feedback compelled me to consider in depth the function my visual style would actually serve, and whether the interest I had in my inspiration pieces was having an unhealthy impact on the quality of my proposed product. Ultimately the move away from pixelart shows development of my understanding, in that a high-quality game's art style has purpose and serves the overall experience in a positive way: for Unpacking, as an example, the pixel style alludes to the retro games it pays tribute to, and is therefore in keeping with the nostalgic feeling the game attempts to convey - not, as previously stated, a feeling that applies to Sycamore Point. Overall the decision to develop my own art style for the project helped me overcome, for a change, my tendency towards an unfortunately rigid mindset when taking inspiration from a source I'm fond of.

Through these influences I refined the visual of an "average person" witch living in the modern era, utilising imagery from grunge and "cottagecore" goth aesthetics to develop the feel of the project.

References (by type)

- Unpacking (2021). Witch Beam, Humble Games. https://www.unpackinggame.com/ 

- Virtual Cottage (2020). DU&I. https://dui.itch.io/virtual-cottage/ 

- Chill Corner (2021). Low-Hi Tech. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1749630/Chill_Corner/

- Witchbrook (Undated). Chucklefish. https://www.witchbrook.com/ 

- Stardew Valley (2016). Chucklefish. https://www.stardewvalley.net/ 

- Gary, G. and Cox, J., 2008. Traditional witchcraft – A Cornish Books of Ways. Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

- Howard, M., 2011. Children of Cain. Richmond Vista, CA: Three Hands Press.

- LIÉNARD, P. and BOYER, P. (2006), Whence Collective Rituals? A Cultural Selection Model of Ritualized Behavior. American Anthropologist, 108: 814-827. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2006.108.4.814 

- Hobson, N. M. et al. (2017) The psychology of rituals: An integrative review and process-based framework. OSF. Available at: osf.io/z4e3n.

- Ferriero, S., n.d. simoneferriero - Professional, Digital Artist | DeviantArt. [online] Deviantart.com. Available at: <https://www.deviantart.com/simoneferriero> 

- Kiki's Delivery Service. 1989. [film] Directed by H. Miyazaki. Japan: Studio Ghibli.

Concepting

The development of Sycamore Point started on a lot of paper. An aptitude for sketching is one of the most valuable tools I have for visualising my ideas to myself and others. Initially this took the form of loose sketches considering the size of the environment, what sort of aesthetic it would have, which room in a house would be the focus, and other details of this sort. I spent a long time thinking and adapting and refining as new ideas and potential impediments came up in the concepting stage, ultimately leaving me with one less notebook than I started with and what seemed like a hundred scraps of paper pinned above my monitor.

To refine the idea at this stage I broke it down to essentials. After some advice from Jeff Howard, I identified the very basics of what constituted submissible gameplay:

1. 1. Import background image/sprite

1. 2. Import object image/sprite

1. 3. A slot into which the object could be placed

1. 4. Functionality to drag/drop the object into the slot

1. 5. Custom assets for implemented objects.

Once this was outlined it became much easier for me to compartmentalise what needed to be done first, and consider how the project could be furthered. I then identified the following two stretch goals:

1. UI elements to guide a smoother UX.

2. Increased number of objects and slots

I also kept my Statement of Intent easily accessible so I could attempt to refer and keep to my development timetable, but this was unfortunately neglected rather quickly as time went on.

Art

I spent a long time hashing out preliminary sketch after preliminary sketch during the first couple of weeks of the module. This involved a lot of refining very specific details and information about how I would have to construct my images to ensure the best readability - questions such as "would it be visually obstructive to put furniture on the front-facing walls" and "would the outline of a door make sense or be confusing" were influential to the development of my idea at this stage, though in reflection were indicators that I was stuck spending my focus on tiny, trivial details while my priority should have been getting my idea to engine as soon as possible. 

The first set of assets I created for Sycamore were made in Aseprite during the time I was still figuring out how to take the project forward. My choice to use this software was primarily due to it being one of the few I'd heard of and stemmed in part from minimal research, but with it and a small drawing tablet I was able to mock up very rough outlines of the environment and items. This process was nonetheless frustrating however, as not only was it my first foray into pixelart as a format but it was also my first proper go at drawing digitally; I therefore had a lot of difficulty creating anything of suitable quality in a reasonable time frame. Eventually, after some time spent fruitlessly grinding at it and some much-needed feedback, I switched back to a hand-drawn style. This let me create much quicker - pen and paper format saved me trying to carve out a distinct visual style in a format I have no experience in, using tools I was unused to. After a suggestion, I considered scanning pen and paper sketches digitally to use as the actual game assets, but I decided not to when figuring out the use (and also locations) of FXU's scanners proved complicated. 

I finally settled on hand drawing on a digital pad to create assets (once settling on the medium I left the asset creation until later in the project timeline while I worked on the more fundamental mechanics). When it came time to create, I used Photoshop 2022 as it allows a large number image layers within a single file without noticeable performance issues. This enabled me to write down notes and ideas on the fly, or safely sketch over the top of work-in-progress pieces to ensure nothing from this stage onwards would get lost on a discarded paper scrap. This is particularly suited to the disorganised way in which I ideate - as it turns out, notes that can't get lost are immensely helpful! This promoted an inherently iterative approach to the design of the background room sprite, and meant I could be confident that my screen space would be as cosy as I could want.

With regards to the creation of object assets, I set myself a goal of two functioning moveable objects for the room for the submission. These are a Crystal Ball and a Tarot Deck, and have visually similar colour schemes - royal purple and  warm gold. This is distinct from any colours used in the background image, and to further distinguish these as interactable items I decided to leave them un-bordered, to contrast with the heavy line-art of the surrounding scene. This is done with intent to visually signify to the player that these objects are separate from other clutter that can be seen. There are also invisible, circular assets used within the scene. These are used to denote the slots items will snap to on the furniture in the room - these are depicted as a pink circle in the .PNG file, but in the scene have 0% opacity and cannot be seen. This gives the effect that items are being placed on the furniture in the background image.

Due to difficulties on the coding and design front, I decided to draw heavier inspiration from more mainstream fictional depictions of witchcraft when creating the final versions of my assets and overall look, as I didn't want to botch an attempt at representing the genuine spiritual practices of real people through inexperienced coding efforts, which naturally affected my representation of traditional witchcraft as a practice overall. As such the influence of the witchcraft sources from my research became more focused on its inherent connection to nature and the importance of the circle, rather than attempts at accurately including any real, practised rituals in the prototype, and the visual style and aesthetic draws from existing clichés seen in a variety of media - I'm confident that, with adjusted focus to fictional theming, this won't be insensitive.

Mechanics

This part of Sycamore Point's development was important to me due to my previously stated intention to develop my programming capability to a suitably average level. The development of this project has been an opportunity for me to improve my understanding and overall confidence in my in-engine capabilities.

I used a number of online sources to help me get to grips with C# coding in Unity, with the two most notable and influential sources of teaching for me being Youtube creators CodeMonkey and Brackeys. Combining knowledge gained from various tutorials each channel has put out greatly improved my confidence when messing around with my code later in the project.

I first used a few CodeMonkey videos to help me understand the 2D environment I was working in, playing around with manipulating the camera and minor things like that at first. During this time I also downloaded a free Utilities package from CodeMonkey.com, though this was ultimately left untouched by the project. During my experiments at this stage I was heavily considering the use of the 2D isometric tilemap built into Unity - I wasn't entirely sure of the pros and cons and spent some time trying to understand the difference between that and the flat 2D screen for my purposes. I eventually settled on using Unity's default 2D environment, choosing to simply simulate the isometric perspective with my background image, partly based on advice from earlier in the module from Jeff who suggested at the time it wouldn't be necessary. 

As such the environment is much more of a pinboard than a room, depicting a flat sprite image with others layered over top to simulate depth. I created a script tied to game objects that would allow me to drag and drop them in Play mode, using the UI canvas to detect when they were interacted with, and also to reduce the alpha when they are being dragged (which has the effect of slightly greying out held items). I then created a script to interact with this that would be tied to slot objects that were rendered invisible by a sprite effect, and would snap the image object to the location of the invisible object when the image was dropped while touching it. This has the effect of an image object (e.g. Cards) snapping into a designated spot on a piece of furniture, simulating placement. 

With regards to audio, I used information from Brackeys to help me create, and importantly understand in great depth, an AudioManager game object that creates a specific amount of audio source components within itself upon the game starting. This is more efficient than having in-scene game objects for each sound, and allows them to be much more easily assigned to different events. In the code for this is the functionality to give each source pitch and volume control options, and the option to loop the given clip. This enables the looping lo-fi track that plays during the game (chosen from a selection to reinforce the calming, meditative environment of the intended UX) as well as the activated click SFX that plays when the player interacts with objects. Both object scripts have audio files attached, with the former playing a click on pickup and the latter playing  a slightly different click on drop. This has the effect of ensuring the second click is only played if the item is dropped in a slot, whereas it will remain silent if the item is dropped elsewhere. They are adjusted to be soft and reasonably quiet, to ensure they provide necessary audible feedback to the player without overriding the gentle mood of the demo. The efficiency of the AudioManager game object allows for near limitless implementation of new effects and objects that can be assigned sound effects through extremely simple code from now on.

The demo mechanics are undoubtedly simple, as accessibility was an important factor for me when making the demo. Most, for example the object scripts, are easily replicable and robust, too, which enables any further additions to be implemented smoothly and efficiently. I found the methods used to achieve this level of support for future development to be extremely beneficial to my overall understanding of programming in Unity with particular regard to project management and longevity. Efficient and transferrable coding practices are extremely important to maintain, so I made sure not to thoroughly understand any tutorials I watched while developing so as to ensure I don't regress back to a position of helplessness when encountering unusual problems in future productions.

With more time...

I intend to develop Sycamore Point as a personal project going forward as it is, so I already have some stretch goals outlined. However, there are certainly things I wish I had added to the demo before submission.

First of all, there is a bug (sort of) in which items aren't coded to snap back to where they were taken from if dropped outside a recognised slot. This means items can technically be left anywhere in the scene, which ruins any sense of immersion a player may have in the game.

Secondly, I'd have loved to get some rudimentary animations working. Examples would include bubbling in the cauldron, or the gentle breathing of the sleeping cat - these would bring a sense of life and comfort to a demo that, at present, can be perceived as somewhat life-less due to the absence of ambient movement. This is certainly something I will prioritise in future projects, as missing it from Sycamore Point has a strikingly significant impact on the feel of the game.

Finally the implementation of useable ritual practices was an initial goal of mine that was cut, but would have very much helped distinguish Sycamore Point  from other games with similar aesthetics.

Future goals for this project include interactable background items, such as a useable cauldron or the ability to turn the laptop on and off, which would provide better immersion into the room and help alleviate the sense of "pinning paper items to a nicely painted board," as a playtester put it.

I'd also like to implement elements to differentiate room objects from one another. At the moment the Tarot Deck and Crystal Ball are identical in all but name and sprite, which would be something worth developing to help items truly embody the real world objects they represent.

Reflection

The paper concepting stage in development took multiple weeks longer than was reasonable. This was measurable against the progress of my peers, and was likely due to the uncertainty I was feeling over how to start in-engine. Minimal work on the module outside of (and, once or twice, during) in-person study sessions for GAM230 during the earlier weeks meant I fell behind quite significantly at first, which itself made it harder to work in the group environment. After that a long hiatus meant a lot of time was wasted in this project through poor management and not keeping track - any disastrous effects of this were alleviated by the adjusted deadline afforded by FXU's disability support, but relying on this isn't good practice.

In hindsight I consider my work ethic during this project average overall, but there were certainly elements in need of improvement - I definitely didn't perform as well as I planned to going into this term and the balance of work over time was very mismatched. I find some reassurance for this when I consider that the wider context of the situation I was in was highly, and unusually, stressful - dealing with a bad combination of several outside factors, most notably the incredibly anxious situation I found myself in with the GAM240 group I was initially a part of, meant I was finding it really hard to muster the energy at the time to do even simple things like eat dinner. With this in mind, I'm comfortable giving myself the benefit of the doubt that, had I been in more typical, less stress-inducing circumstances, I would have been much better equipped to produce good work more consistently throughout the module. Furthermore, I am satisfied with how my understanding of coding in Unity and in-engine development was enhanced by this project.

That being said, of course, this is still a learning experience. This module can and will be used as a benchmark to ensure that future projects I'm involved in don't suffer when stressful events happen in my personal life, especially due to the likelihood that most projects will be team-oriented.

Images:

All image assets were hand drawn in Adobe Photoshop 2022.

--

Music:

Midnight Snack by Purrple Cat | https://purrplecat.com/ 

Music promoted by Chosic.com | https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/ -- Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ 

--

SFX:

Click sound effect sourced from Dreamstime.com

ID 89779925 © Shawn Hempel / ID 89779953 © Shawn Hempel | https://www.dreamstime.com/