Sasha Tschernisch
SYNC is a fast-paced shooter where the player controls the mysterious Divergent Synth as they attempt to take down a sinister AI: SynTell. Use the Sync ability to take control of the various robots blocking your (the player’s) escape from the Unillect facility.
DESCRIPTION
Launch the SYNC protocol, where you are the ultimate weapon! Leap from foe to foe, commandeering different robotic synth’s abilities in a high-octane, first-person frenzy. Each enemy, a new synth for you to possess; every ability, your arsenal. Master the art of possession, and flip the pace of battle in a blink.
ROLE
DOWNLOAD SYNC NOW!
Narrative Designer
GENRE
Action Shooter
PLATFORM
PC | UE5
DEVELOPMENT
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Recruited as a Narrative Designer and fleshed out the overarching narrative and villain
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Edited and implemented narrative dialogue/cutscene systems into the game
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Worked in collaboration with team members from many disciplines to create a solid game narrative
Iteration
Over the game's development period, I wrote and iterated on a game script while implementing a narrative dialogue system to support story in the game.
As a requirement for senior capstone, our game was taken to testing every week of development over the entire school year. This process gave useful changes to make with narrative iteration. One piece of feedback that was vital for me was when players found that the game’s text-based cutscenes were too long. This was a team-wide piece of feedback, which I then took to heart and worked with my design partner to heavily edit and condense our working script.
Documentation
Over the semester, I maintained a Narrative Design Bible and script document to review and travel back to over the process of development. This greatly benefited collaborative narrative work, easing the design process. This document covers everything from character to world design.
Writing the narrative for SYNC also meant developing a script which we edited over the semester to incorporate dialogue and voice acting in our game. Over the semester I had the chance to not only direct story elements, but voice acting and narrative advertising of the project.
Creating SynTell
SynTell’s presence and thus narrative is felt through bits of dialogue the player can encounter within each level where SynTell menacingly berates the player. After each level, a text-based cutscene is presented from the perspective of SynTell. By watching these my hope was the player would get a better understanding of the villain’s motivations and become motivated to continue through the game and complete the mysterious Sync Protocol….
My main contribution to the project was the creation of the villainous SynTell: a virus-ridden AI hellbent on stopping the player from destroying their artificial society. Understanding that the player takes the role of an AI escaping a facility, and the reality that gameplay would be fast-paced and have less room to take advantage of narrative, rather than put narrative emphasis on the player character, I emphasized the game’s villain.
To bring SynTell to life in game, I interacted with the many different disciplines within the team, so the narrative could be implemented successfully. I worked with programmers to create narrative systems, designers to contextualize story, and artists to realize these ideas. Bringing narrative to SYNC became a truly collaborative experience where I mastered the ability to communicate ideas across disciplines.
Key Takeaways
This experience has been invaluable to me as I have gotten the opportunity to work entirely in my discipline of choice: Narrative. Over the semester, I proved to myself that I can collaborate very well within a large team, while still maintaining a high quality of work. I am excited that SYNC will be my first officially released project on Steam.
