We landed on the idea of spirits and got to work trying to flesh out an idea with a bit of a backstory. I was part of the team who worked on the narrative side of things however most of this discussion was so we could leave subtle hints as to the backstory, as opposed incorporating a fully fledged story. 

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We ended up deciding that the main gameplay loop would make the player have to seek out certain items by using clues within the environment left by a spirit that was reeking havoc to the world around it. This combined with the player's own problem solving skills created an interesting and unique set of mechanics. We incorporated a system similar to the board game 'Mastermind' to provide hints to the player using the environment. 

The gathering itself was done by a companion creature which used A* pathfinding to find its way around the world. This added some depth to the gathering part of the game and allowed for multitasking.

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I was responsible for what was arguably the most complex part of the game's mechanics. The journal and clue system was required to be random every single time the game was run, however there were a lot of rules that the system needed to follow in order for it to run smoothly and correctly. I struggled with this system for a while before collaborating with a fellow programmer to smooth out the issues and finally have the system working. I was also responsible for creating the UI for the player's journal, working along side a talented UI/UX designer to create an intuitive set of UI elements arranged in a way which was interesting while still being useful to the player and easy to use.

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The scope of the game was larger than anticipated even with all of the measures we took to prevent this from happening. As a result, by the end of the summer we had decided that the game should be cut down to more of a proof of concept rather than a demo of an actual gameplay loop. So it was changed to show off the various elements without removing any of the hard work of the team.

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