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 something similar or better! So here goes…
Idea
Build a game with 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
- Set up 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 it was my natural choice
- A few assets off the Asset Store to help with the visuals
The game
- I play the 2D character hero
- Each level represents a special moment we shared in our 9 years together — hence the name
- Once she plays through all levels, she’s teleported to the present day
- It’s now the present, and there’s a special memory that hasn’t been created yet…
- The character is in a flowery area that looks like a picnic setup (I matched the signposts to name the actual gardens we were in)
- For the new memory to occur, the character had to unlock a special sequence of moves, which was hidden in a speaker box playing music unsuspiciously
- The game ends with the hero restoring her memory and asking the big question — will you marry me?
