When campfire tales become more than just ghost stories.
When campfire tales become more than just ghost stories.
Spirits of the Lost: a chilling tale about the horrors of bullying
Spirits of the Lost: a chilling tale about the horrors of bullying
Spirits of the Lost is a commercial choose-your-own adventure game developed at IDSI using the Unity game engine. Set at a sleep-away camp, it tells the story of four camp friends (and you) discovering that an infamous Camp Firefly legend may be more than just a legend. 👻 The game was designed as an educational kids’ PSA against bullying, as the character choices you make along the way influence how the game progresses, and whether characters choose to follow your influence or not.
This was the first episode in a planned series. Unfortunately, budgets and other project priorities got in our way. However, we were able to use this game as a demonstration of our interactive capabilities which secured funding for a large interactive training project, Garrison Fox (which I did logos, character design and branding for).
Spirits of the Lost concluded with successful tests with focus groups and was used in demos for our company at various local game conventions and events. 🏕️
👯♀️ TEAM
Lead
STORY
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
PROGRAMMING, GAME DESIGN
Art, rigging & Animation
Eric Monachello, Nick Paparazzo & Me!
Music & SOUND
Compilation of test footage for the game, used for demonstration purposes.
Production
Before I joined IDSI, the company had developed a successful game/training courseware called Reserve Life, which helped reserve soldiers with their mental wellbeing. Leadership wanted to expand the company’s growing interactive capabilities, so creative lead Ryan O’Donnell began crafting the framework for the next project: a choose-your-own-adventure designed as a learning game for kids. (The game went by the project/codename Reserve Life Kids before we landed on Camp Spooky, then ultimately Spirits of the Lost.) 🏕️
With a background in creative writing, instructional designers Lacey and Rachael began crafting the story. Engineers Chris and Duncan laid out the game’s architecture, while artists Nick and Eric developed character designs, layouts, and props. Eric also rigged the characters for animation in Unity.
I entered the project after this initial development stage, and was largely responsible for character animation, effects animation, set dressing, scene writing in XML, and additional layout and prop art. 🎨
During the intro scene, which turns out to be the ghost story Ash is telling around the campfire, you play as Gigi. She was a camper who went missing years ago, and her story has since turned into a legend around Camp Firefly. 🪰
When you start the main game, you can enter your name and pick your player character’s gender – boy or girl.
With the basic scenes written by Lacey and Rachael, we began building out dialogue trees. This was a choose-your-own-adventure with multiple paths and choices you could make, that would ultimately change the course of your stay at Camp Firefly. 🔀
I did a lot of work in this department, building tables and trees for various game paths and mapping out how scenes would unfold. Then, I would enter those scenes into XML scripts read by Unity (a framework designed by Chris and Duncan I.) Eric built out the rigs for facial and gestural expressions, while I got to animate several of those expressions. (Each character also had their own unique walk and run cycles, which I did!) 🏃
The events and animations were called using those scripts, so I took a lot of care in adding those details to conversation points.
This was a new process for me, but I had a lot of fun learning it. 📖
In addition to scripting scenes, I also built additional layouts and props. 🌲
Using Nick’s original tree props, I created additional assets for this new layout and set-dressed it for this scene. Here, the player character finds a mysterious gemstone in an alcove. The game had various environmental puzzles – you had to figure out how to break open the geode using various props in the scene. I set up the required hitboxes and logic flow, as well as dialogue hints (and some easter eggs! 🥚)
I began scenes by thumbnailing them first, then went into Unity to build them out.
Testing and focus groups
We brought builds of our game to Boys and Girls’ Clubs around Hampton Roads, VA for focus testing.
Taking note of how kids interacted with the game, we then made improvements to the story, mechanics, and visuals in further iterations.
To thank the kids for playing our game, I brought sugar cookies 🍪 I made and decorated to look like the characters. I used watered-down gel food coloring and food-safe brushes to do this! 🎨 They took awhile, but I really like doing stuff like that so I didn’t mind. (Obviously – I volunteered the idea anyway.)
The game was also demoed at our table during PixelFest in Norfolk, as well as other local game events.
success and beyond
While we never had the bandwidth to develop further episodes, this was an amazing experience for our company (and us as individuals). We got our name and capabilities out into the world beyond the training courseware we had mainly been doing previously. The game’s success helped us to secure funding during IITSEC 2017 for future projects in the interactive market. 🍻
Plus, seeing the joy and interest the game garnered with children made it all worth it alone. 😊
but wait! there's more!
Aaaand finally, before you go, here are some additional scenes from the game for your consideration…. 😀
(I just really had a lot of fun with this one.)
ok now you can leave