Starved for Company

Starved For Company is a game where you take on the role of an individual who belongs to a high risk group and for whom Covid-19 therefore poses a greater threat. When the pandemic suddenly hits, everyone is isolated. As time goes by, the amount of people who are infected decreases, and people begin going outside again. In the end, everyone except you are walking around outside in the sun and interacting with each other. The time until the pandemic is over is never reaching zero, as people are not keeping a distance and keep infecting each other. You can leave whenever you want to, but as you are at high risk you really have to be careful to not get infected. 

The main aim of the game is to create empathy and make the player reflect on their own behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic. This is done by having a design focused on creating an immersive game world and giving the player the experience of being a high-risk person during the pandemic.

These design decisions are expressed throughout the game. Probably the most important design decision we made was to make the game first-person. This really increased the feeling of immersion which is part of mimicry. To create a sense of temptation to go outside, we added some footballs and a swing that the player can interact with. Additionally, we worked with the colors, so that the park looks very colorful, bright and tempting, when looking at it from the inside, but when you walk outside, the color will change and become less saturated to indicate that this is a dangerous move. This displays that being outside is not very fun at all when you are risking your life to be out there. Finally, we chose to use natural sounds, instead of e.g. music, to make the game experience as close to real life as possible.

Game Design Canvas

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Game Controls: 

Move: WASD or arrow keys

Look around: Mouse

Sprint: Hold down shift