Pages of Time (Thesis Jam)

PAGES OF TIME is a 2 player co-op narrative set over a span of 40 years, through the personal life of an Anglo-Indian woman in colonial, and later independent Bombay (now Mumbai). Players will seek to find where the woman has gone in her absence, from the shifting perspectives of other people in her life.  The game blends personal take on time-travel  adventure in a tone of magical realism. 

Our thesis jam focus, was the intersection between world-building the game space, and exploring a layered 2-player conversational dynamic to puzzle solving.

One player would control the fixed perspective of a young student who cares for his tutor, Frieda as an extra guardian. He comes by for their regular English lesson obe day, and finds her gone. The other player would access a range of  relatives; her husband, her step-sister, her house-maid. These characters each open up different time-period and details into Frieda's life and space, from early  to later adulthood, between 1920s and 1960s. The game involves players going back and forth sifting through layers of both audio and visuals in a collaborative manner to reconstruct the mysteries of an absent woman. One player will use headphones to listen through sounds, music and rumors, and guide the other through the visual space towards different objects in the room and thus, learn more about their history and their present.

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SOUNDSCAPE EXPLORATION (see audiotracks in zip folder):

Audiotrack 1: (1920s)
Marriage years. First seen from the perspective of Dunya, the stepsister, with some hints to Lakshmi's village.

In upper class Bombay, Frieda and Nariman have recently gotten married. He's surprised that she is not joyful at their wedding. His sister Dunya talks about this.

The week of the March festival, Nariman goes to the temple for solace.
That is the first time Frieda happens to meet Lakshmi, the wife and replacement of their usual as "Dabbawalla" a delivery person, collecting Nariman's food box that day. Later in the same season, Frieda goes to a temple on her own and catches a glimpse of Lakshmi there, for the second time. She speaks to her, and learns which village she is from. Frieda keeps a token from that day at the temple, a Ganesha bell at her altar, a symbol new beginnings, that becomes part of the audio hint system in later scenes. Sounds at the end of this audio,  a mule train with bells segment, are references to Lakshmi's village.

Audiotrack 2: (1940s)
Exploring Frieda's room from the perspective of her husband Nariman. His business and his marriage are falling apart, but he still has hopes.

We hear the cityscape, an excerpt from Nariman's thoughts. Frieda and he have disagreements about many things, one of which is the state of the country (he wants the British to stay, she wants them to leave) and at this time she starts going to rallies, spinning the charkha, spending more time in her room, Going to the temple. He decides to take her to the races for a distraction.
Audio hint system: The sound of the horse-beats is placed in the middle of the loom sound, and the temple sound, showing an example of the hint system which, would have been introduced, first with the temple bell sound, previously, as a symbol, when the player picks it up, of something important. In this scene the loom sound gets added as a part of the hint system. When players find the horse derby stub, it carries them to the next mini-scene, the race track.

Audiotrack 3: (1940s)
Race course and the beach - beginning of a more obvious separation

This is the last time Nariman and Frieda go to the races together.
Dunya believes the marital problems are related to Nariman's business problems. 
Frieda will tell  him that day at the races, that they should not share a bedroom anymore. She orders a bed and moves into her study.
She starts thinking about the beach, and the village again.

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This project is meant as a love letter to nostalgia, dusty places that are left behind,  and the human intimacy revolving around relationships on the edge of societal boundaries. It's an attempt to comment on relationships as interpretation, and the paradox of getting to know a personal story through the distance of people close to, but not the person themself.
 The aim of the project  is to also showcase a changing environment and a time period that hasn’t been explored in video-games and we personally want to change that.