Genre: Visual Novel
Engines and Languages Used: Unity, Fungus, C#
Development Time: 1+ Months
Team Size: 1
Primary Roles: Programmer and Writer
This is a text-based game based on the story of Izanagi created for a Narrative Design Class.
The prompt for this assignment was to adapt a royalty-free property into a choice-based game. Naturally, I took this as a chance to go wild with the concept, resulting in a meta adventure on the nature of modern-day adaptions.
Down below are my original story notes for the game.
I knew that an audience would expect them to follow the source material closely or subvert it entirely when making this adaptation. The original tale of Izanagi and Izanami was about a couple that is separated, and by the end, are at war with each other. I wondered, then, what would happen if the characters in this modern-day adaption knew they had to be separated? Would they fight back against that fate?
Those questions were something I attempted to answer, and that made it perfect for the choose your own adventure format I had going on.
Furthermore, I wanted to make the relationship between Izanagi and Izanami to be very believable. My strengths lie in character interactions and getting feelings across via showing, rather than telling.
In the end, I made a very bombastic project that goes off the rails in a glorious way, befitting the way I work on school projects. In my opinion, school projects are a great way to experiment with ideas, with the only real pressure being the deadline. The same is true of work projects, but those tend to have more rigid guidelines. That isn't to say that one is better than the other-guidelines can help breed creativity-but I appreciate every chance I get to let loose.