Imvi: Echoes of Harmony
A narrative-heavy gravity-defying deep space spree.
Technical & Narrative Designer | Unreal Engine 5
23 Developers | 3 Months
Lost in the Void of Space
Imvi: Echoes of Harmony is a game pitched and developed by students at SMU Guildhall. My responsibilities included world design, narrative writing, interface design, progression design, interface programming, and progression programming.
Narrative Design
I contributed to every aspect of the narrative in the game, from writing the initial concepts, to collaborating with team-members to capture their ideas, to coming up with original anecdotes and story.
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As the project progressed, I wrote the text in all of the 27 collectibles present in the game, averaging a paragraph or more each. The systems to display this text to the player were created by me in blueprints and refined throughout the design process by me. All the dialogue in the game went through revisions based on feedback.
At the start of production, I wrote a short story laying down potential major story beats and the main character's motivations.
Progression Systems
The game was designed to be fully explorable from the start of the adventure. Narrative was the chosen method to gate player progression. Each of the three regions has a shrine, and they each require eight collectibles to unlock.
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Until the shrines are unlocked, the text on them is scrambled into an alien language.
This effect scales based on the percentage of the total number of collectibles yet to be found.
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Due to the limited number of artists available on the project, any animated effect demonstrating this was impossible. I created the effect in blueprints through a custom alien font and a random number generator.
Scripting Solutions
Early playtests revealed that players were very confused where to go in the vast expanse of the game. As a quick test, I came up with the concept of a compass which would point towards the nearest objective.
Based on feedback, this was good added functionality. In the video to the right is final version of the compass, which originally was a simple line that appeared sporadically.
In the final version it is player activated, intelligently directs the player towards the nearest objective, and spawns in with a flashy but clear visual effect, as illustrated in the blueprint below.
Visual Effects
The compass visual effect is handled by four different particle effects. One is an explosion of sprites that collides with the player and nearby objects. The next is a spiral of ribbons in the correct direction. The last two are a pair of wavy beams that connects the player with the objective, each beam being slightly different.
​​Upon completing the shrine, which is tracked by a system I designed in blueprints, meteors rain from the sky, and the player is given poetry and backstory, outlining the journey they are on. This originated as the effect I used for the compass. Upon making a new effect for the compass, I multiplied the number of projectiles and changed the fall direction to produce this meteor shower effect.
Intelligent Scalability
From building progression systems out of narrative systems, to reusing particle effects, I intelligently repurposed already used work rather than reinvent the wheel, due to the limited amount of development time available.
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One example is the zone text system, which uses the same text scramble as shrines do, but repeatedly loops through, producing the effect seen on the right.
Localization Administration
Since I wrote the text for the game, I was put in charge of localization, despite my ability to only speak English. The game is successfully playable in three different languages, however, and this was achieved by me finding people more suitable to this task and facilitating their contributions.
I had a Spanish speaker team member and Chinese speaker team member translate the text I had written, and then a third and fourth team member proofread the translated text.
I then took this and communicated with the menu programmer to link in this alternate text to the language selection, resulting in a seamless player experience.
Level Design
​​Pictured is one of the islands I created. It went through several iterations. Originally, when the game was more puzzle focused, it functioned as a crystal maze. Then, it was the site of a heavy meteor shower to dodge, before becoming its final version of an exploratory space forest.
Alongside major geometry additions, I also designed and placed many collectibles and world objects, working in conjunction with other level designers.
At the start of the project, while the exact game mechanics were uncertain, I prototyped several ideas with blockouts. These included a multi-level bridge, an ascending spiral to climb, and an interior temple with sliding puzzles.
Postmortem
What Went Well?
​Cross-discipline communication was spot on.
I was successful and efficient in the tasks I was assigned for this project because of support from different disciplines, such as help from an artist on how to modify fonts, to communicating with the menu programmer to reuse their systems.
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Gameplay was functional very early on.
For a designer, being able to jump in and see exactly how the game plays meant that it was very easily understood what exactly was being designed for. Finding out and testing the metrics at an early stage meant any already done work could be easily pivoted and functional, rather than having to be rebuilt at a later stage.
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What Went Wrong?
The exact win conditions for the game were unclear until near the end of the project.
While the initial mechanic, of gravity, was planned on and clear from the start of the project, the progression through the game and end of the game, and how the mechanics evolved throughout this process, were not. This resulted in things such as upgrades and alternate forms of movement being unnecessarily created before being shelved.​
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Narrative requirements and goals were not specified early on.
Quite a fair bit of what was written had to be rewritten when gameplay mechanics or overall player goal shifted. Rather than being intertwined with the gameplay, the narrative felt in many ways constantly trying to catch up.​
What Did I Learn?
Having a plan for how the game ends is as important as having one for the beginning.
Knowing the player power progression, and the end game state of the player leads to much clearer development and in-game player experience.
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If the narrative is important for a game, it needs to be explored early.
For player engagement, and efficient development, having a clearer and more interwoven narrative is something that can only be achieved by planning for it early.
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