Senior Project: Study Break
This game will showcase the college experience when one struggles with their mental health. I am a huge advocate for mental health, as I have struggled with depression, anxiety, and past experiences with bullying. I want the player to feel a sense of empathy for my characters, as well as recognize the importance of kindness and compassion.
I was heavily inspired by tropes that are often seen in Japanese animation. There are common character tropes seen across anime, and I wanted to expand on these tropes, and explain why a person may behave in that way. I also took inspiration from my own experiences.
Concept Art
The first stage of game art happens to be my favorite. I enjoy coming up with ideas and refining them down to a final design.
Prototyping
While I had ideas for several routes planned, I narrowed the scope down to just a single character for my project. I wanted to tell the story of Quinn, an energetic education major who had to balance school, a job, and taking care of her little brothers, while still finding time to engage in her hobbies.
I decided to use the RenPy Visual Novel engine to create my game. I wanted to focus on art and storytelling, and not spend as much time on coding. RenPy already has the framework for creating a visual novel, which saved me a lot of time.
The final will have a unique UI, but for now, I’m using RenPy’s default settings.
For my prototype, I used some pictures for the backgrounds as placeholder assets.
