An interactive narrative project that I developed entirely solo.

This is a story about returning home after a long trip overseas, and facing the aftermath of a war-torn nation on the verge of falling apart. This is a story about lashing out in the face of inevitable destruction, and the ways we cope with unfathomable loss.

In short, this is a story about living.

Inspired by the stories of the Khmer Rouge my mother told me, and the various wars that dominated the news at the time of writing.

In Fall of 2022, I developed a prototype of this game including a rudimentary outline of each scene. I knew that I wanted to create a game about the fallout of a devastating war, and I knew that I wanted to explore different types of ‘denial’ through the lens of that war. At the time, I was not skilled enough to do this vision justice, and so I put the project on the back-burner and focused my time on other projects. I returned to the project in early 2024, confident now in my ability to do my game justice.

I began work by revising and rewriting the story, focusing mainly on adding more of a branching narrative. Although I knew from the start that there would only be 1 real ending, I wanted the player to reach that ending in their own unique way. I utilized articy:draft to visualize this, and began to plot the different paths that each conversation could take.

I then worked in-engine to implement art and audio, adding footsteps that detect the surface the player is walking on alongside various models from itch.io and other sources.

I took cues from developers like Puppet Combo, utilizing a retro-horror aesthetic to reflect the darker and more unsettling tone I wanted the game to emit. I spent a few weeks working on ensuring the game looked how I wanted it to, refining the pixelation and color grading until I was happy with the results.

By the end of this project, I focused mainly on ensuring there were no major bugs with the dialogue system, and improving several quality of life issues. As my first ever solo project, I am quite proud with how it turned out.