💎 Pitch
Welcome to the year 2050, a time when the future and new technologies are part of everyday life. And what better experience than raising a child for the first time? Helping a couple through it?
As a household AI, accompany and support Lucio and Joelle in their first steps as parents, the panic of getting to the hospital for the birth, the first night with a baby at home, the first tears, the first nappy to change.
🌟 Introduction
Hello World is an interactive narrative game produced for the Hauts-de-Seine Festival.
We made this little game outside of our school projects and classes to participate in the festival, a small competition where many schools from our region take part each year to create the best games. The theme for this edition was "Life."
My goal for the project was to create a small, story-driven interactive game with light gameplay elements, something that would make the player feel like they were truly helping the family.
👾 Gameplay
Since it was a short game made for a festival, we kept it very simple and easy to play. It’s mostly narrative-driven, with players clicking or dragging and dropping to interact.
The game mixes dialogue sequences with small tasks, where the player moves objects to help the couple.
Most tasks are things like bringing the backpack to the husband, or handing baby supplies to the wife.
Because the story is short, we focused on adding more dialogue and narrative moments to help players connect with the couple and understand their experience.
📃 What I've realized on the project
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Concepting the idea
The brainstorming was quick. With the theme being "Life," we wanted to create a playable experience that went deeper than just fun, something meaningful. That’s how we came up with a story about the beginning of life, through a newborn baby and the first steps of a couple becoming parents.
Then came the question: where do we place the player? They had to be close to the couple, but not too close. So we imagined a future where an AI companion lives in the house, a perfect fit for the role.
That’s how the idea came together.
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Writing the dialogues
This part wasn’t easy. I’m used to writing and imagining what people might say, but writing about the first steps of becoming a family was something new.
I asked my mom and friends who have children about their best and worst moments, to help build an emotional story.
Of course, it had to start at the very beginning, the end of pregnancy, the stress of the baby arriving, the rush to the hospital. That was the foundation for writing the story.
📌 Lessons Learned
I learned how to write with emotion and feeling, to make players experience what we wanted them to.
I understood the importance of good writing, speaking through the voice of the character, not just as a blank narrator.
It needs soul, charm and personality to work properly, no matter how short the story is. Even with a small game or experience, quality matters more than quantity.
⚡ Quick infos
Project made in 3 weeks (only during free time).
The game was nominated and awarded 2nd place at the Hauts-de-Seine Festival 2024.
The team:
Artist: Lucio Mazza & Avin Calame
Programmer: Gabriel Le Mer
Designer: Alexandre Foussat
The game is not playable. We chose not to publish it since it was a short project, and we would have liked more time to fully develop the story and experience.
