Project Escape: A free game about mental health
About Me
My name is Russ and I have been attending Portland State since 2018. Along the way I have changed my major, moved a couple times, and learned a million things about myself. I grew up in a very rural area and while I was young developed a passion for books and video games. I started to write and create fantasy worlds of my own and it became a welcomed distraction for me and that has continued throughout my adult life. For my senior capstone project I originally wanted to participate in one of the many different organizations that invest their time into bringing video games to those who do not have the ability to play them in the comfort of their own safe space. When these plans fell through I wanted to make sure I still contributed to the video game community in a way that interconnected the excitement of playing a game with a story of mental health. There have been times in my own life I have dealt with mental health issues and video games and books have been very helpful to me so I wanted to try and give back.
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UNST Goals and MY Intentions
Communication--Inquiry and Critical Thinking--Diversity, Equity and Social Justice--Ethics, Agency and Community
It was always important to me to incorporate these goals into my game. Not only are they critical to my years as a student but they also are actively present in my community. It is a unique challenge to present these topics in my game but I think my script and characters will bring them to the forefront of the game and it will truly end up being an experience people can look back on and be able to recognize these goals. Recognition is a key point for me because for a game to be good it has to have a unique combination of things and I am still learning how exactly to build a game with those things so implementing a proper story that deals with a particular concept like mental health within a community has been a challenge. The good kind of challenge though, one I will walk away from having learned a great lesson about myself.
The Game
My process
The first step for me in this project was crafting an idea from which I could create a script. I love to write but I always try to start my projects like this with a goal for how I want people to feel after interacting with it. While I was brainstorming that aspect I started to sketch out my ideas in my journal. Once I felt confident I began to craft my script in Celtx which is a script writing program with which you can build scripts specifically for games. While I was working on the script I was exploring which engines I thought would work best to build the actual game with and I settled on one of the easier ones to learn which is called RPG Maker. I decided to use RPG Maker because I felt like I could get the most work done within its operating system when I compared it to other engines. After that the hard work began. I have started working on building the overworld and the opening cutscene sequence along with the first few encounters. All "enemy" encounters in the game will be representations of the main character, Ethan's anxieties, fears, and various other things that he believes are holding him back. Encounters vary from overcoming these issues, working with them, or even ignoring them. Some choices will be left up to the player. Ethan will be guided through this overworld by a character he meets that is/will represent his inner-child, someone he has lost contact with while dealing with the different stressors present in his life/mind.
Future Plans
Project Escape has become more than something I am working on for school. It has become a bit of a passion project and I plan on continuing to work on it beyond my time at school. I one day hope to release it for free in hopes that perhaps someone will stumble upon it and experience what it has to say.