Devlog of Overwork

Overwork is a game that reflects some unreasonable working situations in China. In addition to conveying messages about these unreasonable working situations, the other aim of this project is to complete a whole game, which means there is a completed story in the game, players will have intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to play this game, and players can finish the game by themselves, which don’t need instruction or explanation from the designer.

In this project, I am responsible for every design except for programming. I’ve made up an indie game team including two people. Since my teammate is responsible for programming, I can be more focusing on game design eliminating the limitation of programming.

On-going designs and playtesting

THE FIRST TURN

Designs

In the beginning, I want to simulate the working condition of modern office workers. Typing is an obvious action that every office worker will do, so I want my players to type on the keyboard, too. Typing letters on the keyboard seems a little bit difficult for every player, but typing arrow keys is acceptable. In some music games, the gameplay is to input the correct key in a specific rhythm, which will strengthen the achievement of players. For me, I want my players to feel pressure in the game, so I add a pressure bar and timing to every file. If the value of pressure is too high, the HP will decrease.

Problems:

1. When the player finishes a file, the pressure bar just gives the player negative feedback. It does not correspond to the real-life or the player’s mind-when I finish something, I feel more released than just now.
2. Pressure-bar is too direct to express pressure. It feels like players are forced by the pressure bar to feel pressure, not by the work itself.

Improvement:

1. Delete the pressure bar and try to use a metaphor, like a huge amount of work, to express pressure.
2. Draw a scene of an office working, to make the player feels they are working.
3. Change the countdown to a clock, and add some colors to the clock when it passes 6p.m. I think changing the number to the image is easier for players to recognize the urgency of time.

THE SECOND TURN

Designs

Based on the improvement, I also make some new designs.

1. the work that hasn’t been finished today will be left to the next day, but on the third day, the player must finish all of them. I change the color of the files to make them look different, which means they are urgent to be finished.
2. I add a button to get off work, so the player can leave their work at any time. What I want to express here is that it is your freedom to get off work, but you also have to accept the result that the work is left to the next day to be finished.
3. The file which had been finished will disappear, which makes the player feel released. However, the new ones will be added soon.
4. I started to express something more than overwork. When the player is inputting the direction keys, there will be some sudden changes in the direction, which represent that the plan of work is always changing. It is the first work mode that I created and I called it random mode.

Playtest:

1. The feedback of completing the whole file is not obvious. Players just don’t know what they should do next when inputting a wrong key.
2. Players didn’t notice the clock is going and had no idea how they linked together.
3. In the random mode, the next direction key keeps changing and causes a high wrong input rate.
4. In the random mode, the change of the key is not obvious.
5. Even though there are some colors on the clock players still don’t know when should be the time to get off work.
6. Players didn’t notice the color of the files and don’t know the dark ones are the most urgent.
7. Stacked files can add a boiling animation.
8. The character can make a little movement when a player is typing, which will lead to a stronger sense of substitution.
9. The difficulty of the game is too high.
10. Some animations about the colleagues and boss when a player is working.
11. The day takes too long.

Improvement:

1. Add a calculation system that can show the rate of input accuracy and completion.
2. Add some animations to the input bar when it was finished. It will turn green when players’ inputs are all correct, turns yellow when players input something wrong, and turn red when players’ inputs are all wrong.

3. Link the timing with a more obvious environment. I draw some windows and they kept changing while the player is inputting. This will be put in the center of the scene, so players can notice it more easily.

4. Add the animation of the character such as getting up, sitting down, going out of the office, and going into the office, staying up late at night.

5. Make a boiling animation of the character when the player is typing. The movement depends on the keys input by the player, so when the player is typing, the character will move; when the player stops typing, the character stops moving.

6. Adjust the difficulty of the game. It repeats many times after each playtesting including adjusting how long will a day last, how many files should be completed, how fast will the files show up, how often will the direction keys change, and so on.

7. Give the get off work button a name and make it shake when it’s time to get off work.

8. Delete the mechanic that work will be left to the next day. Because if players can’t finish today’s file, they absolutely can’t finish tomorrow’s file. This decreases the player’s motivation to get work done.

These improvements are mostly decided depending on how well the player understands the game after I make these changes. Although some effects like the animations of the boss and colleagues are good advice for my game, since they are not essential for players to understand the mechanic of the game, I have to eliminate them due to the limitation of time.

THE THIRD TURN

Designs

This time, I find myself wanting to express more than only one kind of unreasonable working situation. Since I want to make a complete game, I need to set up a background story for the character, which includes a beginning and ending, and I also need to set a goal for the player so they have reason to work. I not only collected from my experience but also find some cases from social media, and from my friends. I sort these working experiences into some cases:

1. The leader/colleagues suddenly add tasks when it’s nearly getting off work.
2. The work is easy and repeated, but they had a great amount and you have to spend a lot of time to finish them.
3. The plan always changes when you are already going on your work.
4. The work is basic, but it uses another kind of language to package it, making it hard to understand the working content.

These four are suitable to be used in the mechanics. According to the feature of these cases, I design them as:

1. Lazy mode: Five files in the morning, but the work will add at 6. p.m.
2. Bubble mode: Many short files appear on the screen like bubbles, but constantly show up until late at night.
3. Random mode: The direction key will change when the player inputting.
4. Memory mode: Use another shape instead of the direction keys.

However, there are more cases than these.

1. Flexible working doesn’t mean you can better balance your life and work but means you may receive a working request at any time.
2. When the leader of the company wants to fire you and doesn’t want to give the compensation, he will threaten you to resign yourself or find other excuses to shrink responsibility.
3. The company draws a big cake for you and promises you will get part of it, but actually, the dream will never achieve.
4. Deny your efforts, ignore the problem of the ways or demands of the work, and blame them on you.
5. Working overtime will cause sudden death.
6. People don’t want to work like this, but it’s a great pressure to buy a dwelling. Therefore, they have to go on with their life by working like this.

These messages might be hard to all use in mechanics, but they can be used in dialogues or endings, which are more suitable to express complex messages. So the whole structure will be:

Beginning:

The protagonist was just fired by the last company and had a dwelling loan to be paid, so she had to find another company to pay her loan in seven days.

Duration:

Different modes of work.

Dialogue when the protagonist first comes to the company. It is mainly used to introduce the rule of the gameplay.

Dialogue after working in the company for a few days. It is mainly used to expose unreasonable situations at work. The boss will use different words to cover up these unreasonable situations.

Dialogue after the protagonist submits the resignation to the boss.

Dialogue after the protagonist is fired by the boss. The bosses will use different words to refuse to give the protagonist compensation.

Endings:

• The protagonist successfully pays all the dwelling loans, but the new loan will soon appear on the phone.

• The protagonist failed to pay the dwelling loans, so her house has to use in an auction. (This is not real in China, but might happen in America)

• The protagonist stayed up too late many times and died the next morning in the company.

Basically, players can’t learn all the messages in just one playthrough, but I want them to at least feel something different every time they play this game.

Playtest

In this playtest, I mainly showed the four mechanics that I talked about above. Since the dialogue, endings, and calculation system are still in improvement, players can more focus on what the pure mechanics express.

1. In the memory mode, there will be pure shapes shown in the first few files, so the player doesn’t know what he should input when they show up.
2. Even adding a shaking to the get off work button, many players still didn’t notice to click it after work.
3. The get off work button looked like a button to quit the game.
4. Players don’t know the differences between inputting one direction key wrong and inputting all the direction keys wrong.
5. Players don’t know what it expresses in lazy mode.
6. Players don’t know how to play bubble mode, they often need instruction from me.
7. Players didn’t notice the change of the date.

Improvement:

• In memory mode, the first few files will present a mix of pure shape and direction keys, just like unconscious teaching.

• Make the protagonist get off work automatically, and don’t depend on clicking the button to get off work.
• Make an instruction on how to play in the dialogue when the player first comes to the bubble-mode company.

• Adding more buttons on the screen will decrease the feeling that the get-off-work button is a quit button, especially when there is a restart button on the screen.

• The calculation system will give the player instructions on how to get better performance and the change of the date.
• The failed expression of lazy mode is out of my expectation. To express a sudden work which is arranged by boss or colleagues, it needs more mechanics and artwork. But the time is limited, so I tried to save it through the dialogue between the character and the boss.

THE FORTH TURN

Design

When designing the calculation system, what I think is to make the scene close to life. Seeing the phone on the road while getting off work is a good choice, so I design the scene and it is corresponding to the changes in the window.

The phone shown on the left has three functions, make the player find out the motivation of the game and how long the distance between their deposit and their goal is, and help the player search for a job. In the beginning, the information on the interface is not clear enough, so I refer to some applications and improved them.

The animations of the repayment interface at the beginning and end of the game are very important for players to understand their motivation and goal. They were specially designed by a specific animation logic.

I also add a title page for the game. The protagonist keeps typing in the office from morning to night and night to morning again and again. I think players can also get some messages from the the animation of the title page.

The last part is the sound effects. They give a great improvement to the game and have strong feedback when players click everything. I like them so much:)

Playtest

• The title looks a little bit joyful and doesn’t correspond to the atmosphere of the game.
• The start button is not obvious, and the quit button can be put on the other side of the screen.
• Maybe can add an accept or rejection selection when the boss gives some unreasonable requirements, but the rejection won’t give the protagonist anything she wants.
• The salary of each company can have some differences.
• It’s hard to notice what date it is in the repayment interface.
• It will be better to have a triangle on the dialogues which means clicking to see the next dialogue.

Since the last playtest is the day before submission, so I might not improve them in the submitted version, but sure they will be improved in the future.

Tools

The applications that I used to cooperate with the programmer are miro and sourcetree. We mainly use miro for discussion and recording thoughts and progress. The advantage of miro is we can freely share or discuss everything we want on the board at the same time and don’t limited by the format. We also separate the board into different districts to record different requirements or thoughts.

We use sourcetree to convey art sources and text documents. The advantage is it will record each change that we make and if there is something wrong in this version, we can go back to the previous version at any time.

We use UE4 to build this project and I use procreate to draw all the art sources. However, procreate seems not enough to create an animation that is more complex, so maybe I will use clip studio paint to draw animation in the future.

Critical reflection

After I finish my academic writing, I recognized that the work mode in my game can be formed by the experiential gestalt of work. If I use the gestalt, I might save some time in designing the essential elements to make players understand the game.

In this gestalt, typing on the keyboard and finishing work are two essential elements of office work. Therefore, I can make an earlier decision that the performance of these two elements should have strong feedback. Based on this gestalt, I can extend it to suit the four situations that I listed before, and maybe even find a more suitable way to express the message that I want to convey.