Jekyll and Hyde
A walking sim that revisits "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"
Category : Walking sim / Narrative
Role : Game Designer/Programmer
Duration : 1 month
Presentation :
Jekyll and Hyde is a prototype of a walking sim narrative that takes the story of the short story "The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" but with a different point of view.
In this game, the player embodies Dr. Jekyll who is dead and finds himself in purgatory where an entity will force him to relive certain events. He will then have to revisit scenes from his life where he let his second personality Mr. Hyde take control.
He will then have the choice to assume his actions as Jekyll or Hyde or to deny his responsibility and blame his other personality.
The player can explore different environments, interact with certain objects to get more information about the context of the scene or to trigger dialogues.
My work within the group
As a game designer, I helped define how the player would interact with the setting, what form the dialogues would take and how they would be triggered.
I also designed the moral alignment system which places the player along two axes:
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- Jekyll / Hyde axis: It corresponds to the fact of assuming one of the two personalities more than the other.
For example, being 100% aligned with Hyde is assuming that Hyde is not merely the manifestation of Dr. Jekyll's desires but the core personality.
Conversely, a 100% alignment with Jekyll corresponds to assuming that Hyde has nothing to do with Dr. Jekyll's primary personality.
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- Denial / Acceptance axis: this axis corresponds to the fact of recognizing or not his responsibility in the events that have happened and that the player revisits through the visions.
For example, with an alignment100% Denial, the player can find excuses to minimize the consequences of his actions or outright deny the facts.
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The player can influence his alignment when making choices that appear at certain times in the game, but also via the answer to the question that the entity asks us at the end of each scene:
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Although not present in the prototype, alignment aims to unlock different endings for the player depending on their final alignment:
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As a Programmer, I was responsible for programming all of the game's systems.
This includes :
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- A dialogue system with an associated soundtrack, because all the dialogues were played.
- The system of interaction with objects.
- Scripted events such as cinematics thanks to the Timeline.
- The system that tracks alignment progress and displays it when needed.
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I also took care of integrating the 3D assets.