Einsam is a side-view thriller game developed by team Indifference Engine at the ExPlay Global Game Jam of 2013.
The theme for the game jam was a soundbite of a steady heartbeat. The basic premise for Einsam involved Nigel's (a 3D modeler and animator on our team) revelation that in space, the only thing you're likely to hear are your own breathing and heartbeat.
From there we explored the concept of these sounds as gameplay mechanics - specifically as health (or sanity) indicators. Alex devised the narrative, involving the lonely survivor of an incident that tears her colony ship into hundreds of little pieces. She wakes up after the incident and must work her way to the ships distress beacon (or whats left of it), while avoiding a mysterious entity that strips her sanity.
Based on these themes and narrative specifics, the gameplay was designed to evoke a sense of trepidation. The main character (Sam), uses a jetpack to travel between pieces of ship debris. Since she is in deep space, there is no gravity; as such, movement is omnidirectional (along 2 axes). While Sam is in the space between debris, she slowly loses sanity. Sanity is represented by distorted field of view and quickening of the heartbeat. Periodically, a large shadow obscures the screen, indicated by Sam taking a deep breath. If Sam is not over a piece of debris when this happens, her sanity is pushed to the limit; if this happens again while Sam is at minimum sanity, the game ends. Sam can pick up items that stabilise her sanity.
The intent behind this design was that players would be careful travelling between debris and when they were hit, it would put them on edge. I facilitated the gameplay design by writing a word document that described the mechanics in depth. This allowed the team to focus on their tasks while providing a comprehensive and specific reference point. No one was ever unsure of what they needed to do and what the game would play like.
I also developed some rudimentary gameplay objects to serve as pickups, using my (then) recently acquired knowledge of the Zbrush retopology process.
Game jams take place over short spaces of time, so it was inevitable that our game would not be complete, especially given its scope. We planned for a more functional menu, passive breathing sound effects and some artwork of a monster to replace the shadow wave when Sam is insane. While these features were not present in the final game, our programmer (or code wizard) still did an amazing job of implementing what we do have.
I like Einsam as a concept and in future I would like to take it further. Much further.
You can download and play Einsam here (requires Unity Player)
