Breakdown of my Work:

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Pre-Production Phase:

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• Designed the original game concept and core gameplay loop, establishing the creative vision for the game.

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(This project aimed to craft a player-driven experience through a dynamic narrative that branches based on key decisions, culminating in 7 endings. Thematically, it explores a dystopian future where water has become the world's most scarce and contested resource, casting the players to confront difficult moral dilemmas.)

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Production Phase:

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• I engineered an infinite queue system that dynamically manages a line of NPCs, to simulate the constant, desperate demand for water in the city.

 

(This system continuously spawns new characters who approach the player one by one to make their requests, creating an unending flow of moral dilemmas and ensuring the pressure of the officer's role never subsides.)

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• I designed and implemented a comprehensive day cycle system, to structure the player's progression and create compelling resource-based tension.

 

(This system managed the transition between days and leveraged a data table to define daily variables, including narrative events, and a dynamic economy. This economy tracked the player's salary, black market earnings, and essential costs like rent and food, forcing the player into a moral quandary: profit from the city's water supply on the black market, or risk their livelihood by doing the right thing.)

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• I designed a system that procedurally generates unique NPCs, to create a living, grounded city.

 

(I achieved this by modularly mixing and matching materials of facial characteristics, which I painted on Photoshop, as well as other static meshes like hair and hats, which I modelled on Blender, to make up a variety of original male and female characters respectively.)

 

• Inspired by 'Mad Libs,' I architected a dialogue engine using base templates with substitutable words, names, and phrases.

 

(This system ensured each interaction felt original, providing a fresh and dynamic narrative experience with every new character while maintaining thematic consistency.)

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• Designed a direct mouse-driven pump interaction that translates vertical mouse movements into water volume, making the distribution process tactile and physically engaging as well as linking the player's physical input to ethical choices."

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• Architected a nuanced NPC response system based on the water supply the player chooses to give them.

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(There's five distinct dialogue states, triggered by whether the player gave more, the exact amount, a little less, a lot less, or none of the requested water. This ensured every character's response felt authentic and maximized the emotional weight of the player's choice, making each decision feel either devastating or gracious.)

 

• Strategically divided characters into two categories, "Randomized" and "Narrative".

 

(Randomized NPCs were procedurally generated with unique appearances and backstories, ensuring fresh interactions and moral dilemmas with each playthrough. Narrative NPCs were hand-crafted to deliver key story beats and ensure plot progression. This hybrid approach creates a balanced experience, blending structured narrative with emergent, replayable content)​

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• Authored branching narrative content for key factions, creating consequential player choices.

 

(Wrote dialogue for two rival gangs, each offering the player distinct deals to buy part of their water supply. Aligning with one gang diminishes the other's role, while refusing both alliances increases the game's difficulty by cutting off all black market revenue, making their ultimate goal of escaping the crisis in their country significantly more challenging.)​

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• Designed and integrated dynamic world-building systems to reinforce player agency and narrative context.

 

(Designed a daily newspaper system to deliver narrative feedback, mirroring the deteriorating state of the world and explicitly reporting on the player's consequential actions to strengthen the connection between choice and outcome. Additionally, I designed exposition cards to deliver narrative feedback, detailing the player's consequential choices and their progress toward an ending at the conclusion of each day.)

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Official Recognition:

Below you can view my post to winning the 1st Place Award for "Water, I Beg" on LinkedIn.

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https://www.linkedin.com/posts/teo-qerimi​​​​​

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