A symbol you can find in Solanum is the wild flowers. This represents a physical item the player fights to protect for the citizens of Solanum. Utilizing this, I wanted to encapsulate what those who fight for freedom do in order to maintain their connection to their country/kingdom. I do think this aspect of the story needs much more work, and I will continue to write and edit until I can fully do this theme justice.

While writing the dialogue, I kept the dynamics between characters in mind. I wanted to convey each character’s voice through their phrasing and language use. Being able to convey important themes and conflicts through dialogue was challenging, but I discovered that telling a story resembling the struggles of immigrants is a strong suit I posses coming from an immigrant family. Our main character struggles to choose between staying behind to better his people, or to leave to better himself. In the future, I wish to better convey those themes, while also portraying the relationship between the King and the main character as the forefront of the conflict taking place.

In games, much like many other forms of art, a good way to keep players engaged is by allowing them to question their own morals and thought processes. Mateo serves as a moral pillar, basing the players decisions off of what he has already chosen to seek after in the story. It being, finding out how and what is driving the King to exploit his citizens. This keeps the lingering question of “What should Mateo do to make this better?” or more specifically “What should I do? Is staying to help others the right thing to do, or should I leave to protect myself?” in players minds. Of course, players won’t be truly effected by this decision in real life, but it can draw parallels to what this experience might be like if they had to make this decision. Directly placing players in these situations is the power games can have to change perspectives and influence others in their efforts to change the world, just as all(*) art does. A goal of mine through creating this project, is to make players ask themselves these questions, even after playing through the game fully.

Before my team and I started creating this game, we discussed the possible scope of the project. We all wanted to continue to develop the game even after completion for our thesis project, since we are college students. I kept this in mind as Producer, and created a heavily detailed production plan, noting every single task we would aim to complete on a week to week basis for the original milestone timeline we were given for the initial assignment we made this game for. In order to keep track of our timeline, we all contributed to maintaining and editing a Jira board, which I personally managed daily. The possibility that we would/could cut certain aspects of our game is constantly brought up in conversation, but luckily, I planned out our timeline so we wouldn’t come across those issues, since, thematically, we all felt this game was very important to who we are as people. Acknowledging the importance of every aspect of our game is what keeps us driven to put our all into our work, and I personally make sure we do not miss a single goal/milestone we had. I do believe the first run we completed for the game was successful, since it provided us with a proof of concept and a foundation for further development. Strategically, we all agreed that utilizing this piece for Senior Thesis will allow us to go back and improve our work while not using time for actual theme/mechanics development, since ideally that would already be finished.

Production for this game was fairly difficult, but because my teammates were very diligent and responsible with their time and skillsets, the finished product came out exactly the way we pictured. Of course, that will not always be the case for our future endeavors with this game, but with the use of multiple resources, my own personal skills in organization, conflict resolution, and communication, and the competence of my teammates, I do think the future of this game is bright.

The writing established in this demo displays a very basic but exposing plot line that I hope keeps people interesting for future development.

The King, Aurelio, and the knight, Mateo, both suggest sharing a special relationship through the way they talk to each other. Keeping this in mind, they both contribute to the power dynamics they hold over each other and others. Mateo’s good friend, Camilla, serves as a equalizing view point, sucking Mateo out of his tranquil and warm feelings he has for the King in order to get him to realize the harm he is doing to his citizens.

In the end, Mateo must choose between leaving or staying with the King. Based on the player’s choice, a final battle scene where you fight either Camilla or Aurelio commences.