9-Years

Background

In August 2017, I had been dating my girlfriend for over 9 years (indeed, we were dating since high school).
I was ready to ask the big question, but I wanted to do something meaningful… so I built a game to help me!

I had put off writing this blog post since then as it’s been a very personal project of mine. I will exclude all personal details and focus on the narrative and setup.
Hopefully this may inspire someone to do somethig similar or better!
So here goes…

Idea

Build a game that has the following narrative:

  • My character is “the hero” (hehehe)
  • Her character is “the princess”
  • We lived happily, until the princess is kidnapped by an evil monster
  • Being the great and mighty hero that I am, I slayed the monster with a slash of my sword
  • However, the monster cursed my beloved and she lost her memory!
  • She no longer remembered her hero
  • A wizard advised that for the hero to restore her memories, the hero has to venture back in time to the special moments shared together and collect fragments of her memory
  • Once all the fragments are collected, the hero would be able to restore her memory

The Plan

  • Setup a picnic somewhere (pray the weather holds up)

  • Build a DIY speaker that I can use as part of the entire game

  • Ask my girlfriend to play the game on my phone, saying it was a side-project I was working on
  • Timeline: A month

Tools

  • Unity – At the time I had been using Unity for a few years and was my natural choice
  • A few assets off the asset store to help me with the visuals

The game

  • I play the 2D character hero
  • Each level represents special moments we shared in our 9 years together – hence the name
  • Once she plays plays through all levels, teleport to the present day
  • It’s now the present and there’s a special memory that has not been created yet…
  • The character is in a flowery area, which looks like a picnic setup (I matched the sign posts to say the name of the gardens we were in)
  • For the new memory to occur, the character had to unlock a special sequence of moves – which will be hidden in a speaker box, which will be playing music unsuspiciously

  • The game ends with the hero restoring her memory and asks the big question – Will you marry me?

She said Yes 🙂