The Mobiusband
Möbiusband, a 2D role-play game with three game levels, aims at raising the awareness of the impact of emotional neglect and the importance of children’s mental health by allowing players to enter a boy’s heart and try to avoid being hurt as he grows up. The game story also tries to emphasise the transgenerationality of the negative impact. Following the three game levels with different objectives and mechanics, players will experience important stages during the growth of the kid.
Game assets and animations were created by my amazing teammates.
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Game Narrative
The Möbiusband has a philosophical connotation. The whole ring is a one-sided surface with no positive or negative side. The Möbius strip symbolises the never-ending journey. In our game, Möbiusband represents the never-ending consequences of family conflicts and emotional neglect on offspring, which also emphasises the transgenerationality of the negative impact.
Following the three game levels with different objectives and mechanics, players will experience 3 important stages (childhood, adolescent, adulthood) during the growth of the kid. The story brings out examples of emotional neglect such as ignoring children's interests. In the end of the story, the kid who suffered from negative impact becomes a father and then realises he may have the similar behaviours like his father, which implies the transgenerational impact once again.
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The first level requires players to control the little boy to fight against negativity and mental stress when his parents are having serious conflicts. Arrows represents those hurtful words from the parents. Arrows are coming from random positions. The gameplay tries to connect players to the kid by creating anxiety and insecurity.
The mental stress from family conflicts are visually illustrated as heavy dumbbells. As dumbbells fall down slowly, the game creates pressure for players, which helps players to better understand the mental stress.
Players' mouse is replaced by a toy bear. As the kid lacks support and caring from parents, he may see his toy as his hero. Health point is represented as a growing dark tree. Players need to avoid the growth of the dark seed that implies the negative impact on the child.
During the last level, the kid is already grown up to a adult who wants to make decisions on university majors. By implementing a "tug of war" gameplay, the game wants to bring out the exhaustion when arguing with parents who doesn't support your decision.
Level Design
03
Player Controller
Use A&D to move the character left or right, and press SPACE to jump. Variables in the animator controller are updated after receiving the input to transit between animation states.
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Future Improvements
The second level of the game which involves pathfinding and AI enemy hasn't been finished yet. The game could be more polished. The gameplay of the third level could be improved to the QTE style.
