M4 artifact (temp) - Postmortem Update from Designer

This project began with an ambitious vision: creating a collaborative, narrative-driven game with layered mechanics, branching paths, and a dynamic in-game world that responded to the player’s actions. Most ideas were scaled down or reworked due to design disagreements, time constraints, and scope management.

The original goal was to create a collaboratively written story where narrative progression was shaped by both player decisions and contributions from team members. In practice, however, the collaboration turned out to be limited. Many suggestions were met with objections, which made it difficult to maintain a shared creative direction. This reduced input from other contributors, which resulted in maintained cohesion. 

A hybrid world built with 3D environments enhanced by 2D pixel art overlays was originally proposed. However, our artist had a strong preference and talent for pure 2D pixel art, and leaning fully into that style allowed us to maintain visual consistency.

We also initially planned to include several additional gameplay layers, such as photo manipulation mechanics and a gambling system. These were intended to add complexity and variety, but as development progressed, it became clear that the core loop wasn’t deep enough and universally agreed upon and introducing any of them would extend development significantly. Rather than introduce more incomplete systems, these features were cut out entirely.

Text-based clues were supposed to complement photo evidence and enrich the storytelling. However, due to time constraints, the text clues never made it (or seems like it won’t) into the final build. The current build of the game only relies on the number of photographic clues dragged into the article.