Brief
Norme HBTv is a 3D strategy game prototype realised for the Global Game Jam of 2024. The theme “Make me laugh”, can bring different meanings depending on the point of view used. Become a cameraman streaming simultaneous 4 live broadcasts trying to please the audience by showing suitable content.
My role
What I did in this project:
- Design the game’s mechanics, the gameplay loop.
- Designed the interfaces for the tutorial and the game.
- Animated the characters assets from the artists to create the events.
Concept
In a world where no positive information circulates in the media, the morale of the population is at its lowest. Europe announces a new standard for television programs. The channels will now have to respect a certain neutrality regarding the general mood of the set, in order to not be banned.
As a cameraman, browse the 4 TV sets, manage on-screen events and avoid compromising your compliance while keeping viewers captivated. But beware! Will you be able to juggle between disaster and humor, and keep your job?
- Control the camera to broadcast through the different programs.
- The audience will be pleased by showing any kind of events.
- Avoid the negative events to show only the best ones, if you don’t want to end in jail.
Gameplay
The norm HBTv bored the audience and they want something refreshing no matter what it is, but TV shows are at risk if they don’t respect the neutrality. While broadcasting televisions programs, the player have a complex goal; raise the viewer rating without lowering its legality rate to 0.
Those two parameters are linked as follow:
If the player shows nothing special.
- The viewer rating decrease slowly.
- But nothing happen to the legality gauge.
If the player shows a bad event.
- The viewer rating increase quickly.
- But the legality gauge decrease quickly.
If the player shows a funny event.
- The viewer rating increase slowly.
- But the legality gauge decrease slowly.
The game ends when either you lose all the audience or your legality gauge hit 0.
Event scenario
For each TV set a certain number of events is determined to happen during the game.
When a bad event happen on a TV set, the solution to escape it and regain audience and legality, is the corresponding good event on another TV set.
Let’s take the first line as an example: during the first time on the cooking show
- While the cook was the cutting vegetables he cut his finger.
- This bad event will reduce audience / legality.
- To regain audience, the player need to go to the JT public TV set where the solution to ease or regain audience / legality is.
Additionally, some stories are hidden within the events that happen during the game. A bad situation that happen at a moment can have a resolve later in the game.
For example on the JT public:
- The TV presenter is having a dispute with his wife over the phone (it’s a minor bad event).
- Some time later, you can see the TV presenter smiling while sending love message to his wife.
While the first one happen early in the game, the later come only near the end possibly after an extreme event which is zombie invasion. Relieved to have survived this extreme situation, the TV presenter reconciles with his wife.
Gameplay interfaces
As the player is a cameraman on a TV set, I designed the main interface based on interfaces from real TV set camera. I keep some elements from original interfaces such as the REC, the picture settings and the zoom; with the objective to not overwhelm the player while immersing him enough into becoming a cameraman.
There is two important elements in our gameplay, the audience counter and the legality gauge.
The audience counter have 3 states depending on what the player shows: increase, decrease and stagnate.
The legality gauge have been implemented in every TV set camera following the norm HBTv. It is taking a huge place because it became an important element in the TV broadcasting.
Based on the main interfaces, I designed the interfaces for the tutorial and the menu.
Animations
After the artist create every illustrations for the multiple events, I used After Effects to animate them. With the puppet tool, it is easier to create small animation movements. It allows me to create funny animation that really bring to life those illustrations.
