Portfolio
Romeo & Juliet is a narrative horror game retelling of the original story, which I created with two other designers. The player takes the role of either Romeo or Juliet, who have escaped from a family party to run away together. Their temporary refuge in the woods is a perfect place to crash for the night, but someone has followed them there and wants to kill them.
Group Project
role: character artist, writer
Project Runtime
1.5 month
Software Used
firealpaca, google docs
During this project, I was responsible for creating the complete story layout and writing the script of scene 2, 5, 6 and 7. I have also created the character assets used in the game.
On the right, you can see the first concept art I created of the characters, as well as all the character sprites shown in the game. Our game is set in the 80s, so I went with an aesthetic similar to that.
The game features a couple of cinematic scenes during important moments, to increase impact on the players. For these scenes, I have drawn the art pieces accompanying the story. In the version of the game we created, there is only two featured pieces, but in the full version of the game this number would be larger.
The story is divided into a total of seven scenes, or chapters. Each scene serves its own purpose in the complete storyline and the game handles various mechanics that are introduced to the players throughout the scenes.
Scene 1 starts in Juliet's home, where her family is having a party. Romeo comes to pick her up in secret and they take off together. The scene serves as character introduction and an introduction to the mechanic of making choices in the narrative, some of them timed.
Scene 2 brings the player to the house in the woods. They get to pick their character and the scene progresses. For the sake of this project we have only worked on Romeo's run, since working out both runs wouldn't have been realistic. I will be focusing on describing the events as told in Romeo's version of the game. This scene ends with the introduction of the antagonist who chases Juliet into the woods. Romeo has to go after them.
Scene 3 centers around making the right choices. During the chase in the woods, the player needs to make the right choices for directions and distractions; every wrong choice leads to the loss of a move. If the player runs out of moves before they find Juliet, she is killed. If the player has enough moves left, Juliet lives, and Romeo reunites with her at the end of the scene.
In scene 4, depending on the outcome of the previous scene, the killer goes after only Romeo or both Romeo and Juliet. The chase is a lot faster paced than the previous scene, which results in a lot of quick-time events for the player. Choices have to be made quickly so the player's stamina bar doesn't run out. If it doesn't run out, the player goes to scene 5. If it does run out, the player is sent directly to scene 6.
Scene 5 is only accessible if the player got a head start in the previous scene. Romeo and Juliet get to set some traps in the house for the killer, or grab a weapon to defend themselves with. This scene has several possible endings; the timer runs out ending, which leads to scene 6, or some special scenarios, which either lead to a special variant of scene 6 or to one of the endings of scene 7.
Scene 6 centers around the player defending themself from the killer. If the player ran out of stamina in scene 4, they enter scene 6 completely blind with no preparation time from scene 5, and they can navigate through the house freely to improvise. If the player's timer in scene 5 ran out, they can go through it in similar fashion, but they can lead the killer into traps they've set or circle back around to weapons they discovered during their preparation time. If the player triggered this scene through one of the special endings of scene 5, they'll get a special version of scene 6, which generally only features a small chunk of the house rather than running through it in its entirety. Depending on the player's choices made in this scene, they'll end up in scene 7, which features the endings of the game.
The game features a bunch of different endings, all based on the choices made in scene 6. It really boils down to two main variants: Romeo and Juliet live, or they die. Either way, in this scene it is revealed that the killer is Tybalt all along, as he saw the two leave from the party. He's on drugs and hates Romeo, which is why he ended up following them with the intent to kill.
This project has allowed me to get back into writing, and I ended up writing almost 30k words for the script. It has also given me another opportunity to practice character design, and it has helped me with practicing time management; it was a lot of work and we did not have a lot of time, but we still managed to deliver a playable demo of the game as we envisioned it.
