NARRATIVE, CHARACTE & DIALOGUE
This page explores the background narrative of the game, how we came up with it, the process to designing the quests, and a breakdown of how the dialogue was made
Background Narrative
Right off the bat, the whole team knew we wanted our narrative to be a comedic one. After all, why would we have a serious story in a game about punching kidney stones? We also wanted to have a varied cast of patients, each of them with a unique look and personality. We confirmed our narrative to be one where the player runs a clinic specialising in punching kidney stones, with a variety of patients coming in for assistance.
CHARACTERS
With our overall idea settled, we brainstormed several different possible characters that we wanted to include, considering why on earth they would want to come to a clinic with a kidney stone. An idea followed that, where we would have each patient carry a unique variation of the kidney stone, that tied into who they were. For example, the Old Lady would have an elderly-looking Kidney Stone. We also wanted to include an assistant for Dr. Gunter, who would serve as an in-world way for players to receive the tutorial and other tooltips.
As a fun idea, we thought it would be hilarious if this assistant was a black-market dealer, who should have nothing to do with anything in the medical field. This idea expanded to have the dealer steal items off of each patient after every battle, for use in the following one. That gave us space for one final battle, which felt right, considering each patient never felt like an appropriate final one, and we would have a spare item otherwise. In keeping with the ridiculous tone of the game, we decided on the finale having Dr. Gunter operating on himself, punching his own kidney stone to smithereens.
DIALOGUE
With everything lined up, the next thing we needed to make was the actual dialogue itself. This allowed us to flesh out the characters more, and gave numerous opportunities for jokes and laughts. As one of the Kidney Stone’s skills was to taunt the player, we thought it would also be funny to include some quips for that as well, along with other, less intense lines from the kidney.
The responsibility of writing the dialogue was split between myself and the other designer on this project, and we met frequently once we had completed each section of dialogue, to ensure that tones were consistent, information was given clearly (in the case of tutorials) and of course, that the jokes were funny. We definitely succeeded in that last part, as a lot of laughs were received from players who tested the game, and many enjoyed the humorous premise, characters and dialogue.
GALLERY
