Small Tales

<em>Small Tales</em> is a 2D video game with hand drawn and watercolor painted assets that incorporates a series of vignettes centered on the collection of artifacts. Growing up, I experimented with and investigated a wide variety of media, such as Alice and GameMaker but ultimately decided to sharpen my fine arts skills and incorporate them in to video game engines in this thesis. A variety of point and click adventure games such as the <em>King's Quest</em> and <em>Monkey Island</em> series inspired the development of this game due to their emphasis on narrative and player interaction. This thesis developed from a series of earlier projects that helped me settle on four primary objectives: vignetted narratives, player choice and consequences, visual and text components working harmoniously, and replayability via randomized generation. A Processing sketch emphasized the need for strong visual assets in addition to text-based narrative; in addition to replayability via randomized strings or text for a unique narrative every iteration. Afterwards, a Twine game further encouraged visual assets working with text, but solidified a foundation in player choice and consequences. Finally, my first experiment in Unity with the Adventure Creator helped me establish a functional workflow to achieve my four goals. <em>Small Tales</em> itself revolves around a series of vignettes connected by the world of the player character. Players wander an unfamiliar neighborhood to find artifacts that at the end of the game reveal tiny stories about other worlds. The game was received well by players during my defense for its ethereal atmosphere and for creating an engaging story world. But a handful of suggestions from these same players could push the game to be even better. <em>Small Tales</em> will be available online after these critiques are taken under consideration.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Fine Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Creative Technologies

Department dc:contributor.department

Art and Art History

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Suess, Maureen Elizabeth

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Webster, Dane

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Tucker, Thomas J.
• Paterson, Simone W.

• Art
• Video Games
• Creative Technologies
• Narrative
• Unity

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:14518

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/83879