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DreamlanD

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Contents

About the game

Character development

Use of AI

Generating code

Press kit

About the game

DreamlanD — is a visual novel video game designed and developed by one person. The game was released on Steam on [date].

The game takes place in a fictional world that is a collective image that has nothing to do with reality. Most of the game is focused on unraveling mystical symbols.

Some of the visuals were created using artificial intelligence (AI), due to the fact that the developer has no artistic skills.

The player can make their own choices during the game, influencing the ending of the game.

Plot

Alexey and Dmitriy are ordinary workers of the logistics company "Watcher's Cargo". Strange events begin to happen first to Alexey, and later to Dmitriy. They begin to see mysterious symbols that accompany them in everyday life.

Against the background of recent upheavals, they decide to meet with old friends — Alina and Svetlana, who, in turn, also encountered strange events. Together they begin to see a mysterious aura in objects.

The company of main characters begins their journey from the world of dreams, where they have to collect information bit by bit. Along the way, the guys encounter mysteries and interpersonal conflicts. Will they be able to overcome themselves and get out of this story and find answers? Everything depends entirely on the player and his decisions.

Main characters

Image by https://unsplash.com/@benjaminsweet

Chipakin Alex Semenovich — ordinary employee of "Watcher's Cargo".

Alexey worked as a logistics manager for a cargo delivery company. His days were spent making endless calls, negotiating with suppliers, and monitoring the fulfillment of orders. Alexey was a person who valued stability and order. He had a cozy apartment where he spent his evenings reading books, playing video games, or watching TV series.

He was neither a hero nor an antihero - just an ordinary person with ordinary dreams. His friends often said that he was too predictable, but he found solace in his measured life.

But everything changed. At first, Alexey hesitated, but something inside him whispered that this was a chance to change his life. He agreed, and from that moment his world turned upside down.

Alexey began to explore his hobbies, filling the voids in his soul. His life was filled with new acquaintances, adventures, and challenges. He realized that sometimes it is worth taking a risk and going beyond the usual to find your true self.

Zhuravlev Dmitriy Parfenovich — ordinary employee of "Watcher's Cargo". Alex's best friend.

Dmitriy is an energetic and sociable guy who works in a logistics company. His life was full of bright moments and friendly meetings. Dmitriy was always the center of attention - his infectious smile and ease of communication attracted people, and he quickly found a common language with any interlocutor.

Every evening after work, he went for a walk around the city, enjoying the atmosphere of evening lighting and the sounds of street life. Dmitriy loved open bars and parties, where he could meet old friends or make new acquaintances. He was the life of the party, always ready to support a conversation and cheer up those around him. His friends appreciated him for his optimism and ability to find positivity even in the most difficult situations.

Despite his active social life, Dmitriy remained a responsible employee. He skillfully combined his responsibilities in the company with hobbies, which earned the respect of his colleagues.

Dmitriy dreamed of traveling and new experiences, always looking for ways to expand his horizons. He believed that every day was a chance for something new, and he looked forward to what adventures tomorrow would bring.

Seleneva Alina Stepanovna — shopping center employee. Former place of work: logistics company.

Alina works in a shopping center as a sales consultant. At first glance, her life may seem ordinary, but it has its own special magic. Alina has always been friendly and responsive, which made her a favorite among both colleagues and regular customers. She knew how to create an atmosphere of comfort and warmth, helping people not only to choose the right product, but also to lift their spirits.

Every day, Alina greeted the morning with pleasure, making herself a cup of aromatic coffee and choosing an outfit that lifted her spirits. Her wardrobe included bright dresses and stylish accessories that she happily wore to work. She believed that appearance affects the inner state, and always tried to look her best.

In the evenings, Alina loved to gather with friends in cozy cafes or restaurants. She enjoyed communication, laughter and discussing the latest news from the lives of each of them. Alina could spend hours discussing new culinary discoveries and sharing recipes for her favorite dishes. For her, food was not just a source of energy, but a real art that needed to be appreciated.

Zarodskaya Svetlana Andreevna — shopping center employee.

Svetlana works as a salesperson at a shopping mall. At first glance, she may seem quiet and inconspicuous, but deep down, there is an amazing personality. Sveta is taciturn, preferring to listen rather than talk, and often watches those around her with a kind smile on her face. Her intelligence and insight make her an excellent conversationalist, although she rarely initiates a conversation.

Svetlana has a gentle nature, which is reflected in her attitude towards people. She is always ready to help her friends and colleagues, even if it requires a lot of effort from her. Her caring and attention to detail make her indispensable in the team, and many appreciate her for this. Despite her silence, Sveta knows how to maintain conversations with clients, showing a genuine interest in their needs.

She is a little clumsy, which adds to her charm. You can often see Sveta tripping over her own feet or accidentally dropping things, but she always laughs at herself, not letting these moments spoil her mood. Her friends adore this trait - she creates an atmosphere of ease and casualness around her.

Svetlana loves spending time with loved ones, although she prefers solitary meetings in small cafes or on walks in the park. She values deep conversations and sincere emotions, and is always ready to support her friends in difficult times. Her kindness and responsiveness make her a true friend who can be relied upon.

In her free time, Sveta enjoys reading books and drawing. These activities help her express her feelings and thoughts, which she sometimes cannot voice in words. Svetlana dreams of one day going on a trip to picturesque places, where she can be inspired by nature and create new works of art.

Development

Idea

All projects start with an idea, and "Project Y" — (Dreamland) is no exception.

The idea was based on moral teachings: making games is difficult, making games is impossible; special (specific) skills are needed to create anything resembling a game; a person without programming and design experience will not be able to do anything related to a game. But why not try? This is the question that started the "Project Y" project.

The main goal of the project: to create a free game, or as cheap as possible (due to lack of budget) without any programming or game creation skills.

❝ If you want to have what you've never had, you'll have to do what you've never done. ❞

— Coco Chanel.

If there is a strong desire, then skills are not a problem. But before we start, we need to decide what we already have? The main developer is me, has a liberal arts education, has modest skills in Photoshop and knows what code looks like. Now let's summarize the skills we already have:

✅ Ability to write text (available: hands and head);

✅ Image editing (Photoshop, Figma, AI);

✅ Experience in games (played);

❌ Experience in game creation;

❌ Experience in writing code;

❌ Experience in game designers/game engines;

❌ Experience in script writing.

Great, we've decided on the skills. Now we need to decide on the type of game:

✅ Visual novel (we can find pictures and write text);

✅ Roguelike (we can find pictures, write text, understand simple mechanics);

✅ Clicker (we can find pictures, write text, understand simple mechanics);

❌ AAA product and other types (complex mechanics, complex textures, too-o-o-o-o hard).

The choice fell on a visual novel. Since I love everything mystical and atmospheric, I wanted to add these aspects to my game.

The programs were selected mostly free and with maximum efficiency, in the opinion of the developer. The following programs were chosen:

Photoshop - editing images, scenes; correcting minor sins of artificial intelligence;
Figma — creation of vector graphics, symbols;
Renpy is the main program for creating games;
Visual Studio Code is a program for writing and editing code;
Twine is one of the free programs for writing and editing scripts and scenarios;
Mannequin Character Generator - creation of character models.

Now we can start writing the script.

Scenario

Image: Twine interface

The game's script is based on the following works: "Stranger Things", "Ghostbusters", "Twin Peaks", "Steven Universe", "Alice in Wonderland" and others.

I use Twine to create the plot of the visual novel. In this program, you can create a plot in the form of cards that can link to other cards. This is convenient when you need to make a branched choice. Initially, it was decided to create the plot in Microsoft Word. But there were problems with this software in terms of forks (when the character needs to make a choice) and narration (when you need to implement different commands, Word works strangely). In general, I had to settle on Twine.

Twine itself is free. The software is open source, that is, its code is open. There is support for hyperlinks, various macros, etc. Not everything is used in projects, of course, but it is interesting to try.

It was decided to make a fairly uniform, simple linear plot. Initially, one simple plot line was created: Our days → Past (story) → Our days, on which the plot itself is layered. The story was created as short as possible to reduce the time it takes to make the game. Since the story tells about different worlds and creatures, this moment can be used to create a sequel or continue the story using other main characters.

Character development

The characters turned out to be quite simple. As the creator of my first project, I did not want to overload the main characters with too much deep meaning. More developed characters can be left for a full-fledged large game project.

Initially, the characters were created using AI (artificial intelligence). This is due to the fact that the developer does not know how to draw at all. Therefore, it was necessary to resort to the help of AI in order to create imaginary characters and main characters, as well as the background. Most of the images created by AI, unfortunately, were not suitable for the game. Therefore, it was necessary to approach the choice of both characters and backgrounds more seriously. After unnecessary pictures were filtered out, the images had to be processed in Photoshop to achieve sane results. The concept of the characters created by AI can be seen below:

Dmitriy concept.

Runner concept.

Alina concept.

Dreamworld concept. Version 0.

Artificial intelligence turned out not to be a solution to the problem, but just additional work. After searching for free character models (remember the goal of the project), it was decided to stop at the Mannequin Character Generator program. It is free and can be downloaded from Steam - it is suitable. The main thing is to remember about copyright when creating, editing and using images. For my purposes, the photo stock "Unsplash" was suitable, where I was able to find many different photos without copyright. However, as support for the authors, in the "Press Kit" section you can find all the mentions of the authors whose images helped my project.

After creating a visual image, a certain "legend" was added to the characters. It was simplified as much as possible so as not to focus the player's attention on finding any mysteries in the past of the main characters and to focus on the atmosphere.

The characters travel through an urban environment, in places reminiscent of certain countries. However, the image is collective and during the game you can find images from different parts of the world.

Use of AI

Wrath valley concept.

As already said: "Artificial intelligence turned out not to be a solution to the problem, but only additional work." AI was used to create character concepts to see "live" how they would look in the frame. Further work on the characters with the help of AI was not carried out.

The main work of AI was to create the background. The worlds through which the characters travel are fictional, have no analogues in the real world. It turned out to be an extremely difficult task to find images that could convey the author's idea and be strange enough.

AI copes well with the task of creating strange objects with some adjustments, and this is not about quality, but about meaning. AI creates good scenes, but everything is spoiled by trees hanging in the air or the character's head smoothly turning into clouds. All such images were removed and were not used in the game.

Using AI, I understood that some users, if not most, could react negatively, since AI cannot produce the same quality as real artists. The game doesn't have and never had a budget, so we had to resort to desperate measures to implement what was in our heads. The mention of using AI is on the game's Steam page.

Generating code

The game code is written in Python programming language with a unique syntax. Python itself is considered a fairly simple programming language for beginners in the IT field. "Renpy" uses Python, but with a caveat. You don't have to write all the code, but only some part for displaying images and text, the rest of the work is done by the "Renpy" program, while saving the game code under its "rpy" extension.

With programming languages, video tutorials on the "YouTube" platform helped me a lot, which made writing code easier and more interesting.

My main tools were "Wikipedia"; "Renpy" documentation and video tutorials on "YouTube".

But creating the game was not without problems. Often the application gave errors, or simply refused to start. The reason, naturally, was between the monitor and the chair. Realizing this gave me optimism.

Press kit

On this page you can see the press kit.

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