Interactive Game Poster v1

Hints

1.  On the main title scene, you can click on the “THE LAST OF US” title plaque.

2.  On the main title scene, you can click on the word “voyage” to activate a minigame.

3.  On the main title scene, you can use the arrow keys to move a small square out from under the title plaque.  Click this square, and the “voyage” minigame will be different somehow.

Full Walkthrough

From the main title menu, there are three interactive objects.  It begins with the intro, which lasts a few seconds.  The intro ends when all the text is finished fading into the poster.  The end of the intro transitions seamlessly into the title menu module, in which there are the following interactable “games”:

1.  Text Crawl

Clicking the “THE LAST OF US” title plaque activates the text crawl minigame.  I’ve synced it to “Final Dream” by Toto from the Dune 1984 movie soundtrack.  You can hold spacebar to speed up the crawl.  After all the text goes up and out of the screen, it goes back to the title menu module.

2.  Exploration Minigame

Clicking the word “voyage” in “An interstellar voyage through time and space begin with you” activates the exploration minigame.  In this game, the player uses the arrow keys to control a little grey square that represents the player’s ship, while an instrumental version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity plays.  In order to progress through the game, the player must fly into the planet of each scene.  When the player flies into the planet, a text box appears describing the planet.  Then they are ready, they can press spacebar make the text box disappear.  Then they must fly into one of the edges of the screen to transition to the next scene.  The player repeats this process through 9 different planets.  After the pressing spacebar on the description of the 9^th planet, the game fades to black and transitions back to the main title module

3.  Hadfield Easter Egg

At the main title module, the arrow keys are controlling a little square.  The starting position of this little square is behind the “THE LAST OF US” title plaque.  If the player moves the square out from under the title plaque and clicks on it, it will turn yellow to indicate that it is activated.  If the player then plays the exploration game with this square active, the music that plays will be Chris Hadfield’s performance of Space Oddity instead of the David Bowie instrumental.

Design Goals and Process

My goal for this project was to try to give the player a taste of having a wide open universe to explore; a feeling of freedom.  This was the original vision for my game poster.  I had never coded in JavaScript before this project, but I had some C++ experience.  Luckily, JavaScript is quite similar to C++, but it does have several key differences.  In the end, I was able to make my game concept work in practice, despite my inefficient use of JavaScript.  It may be held together by scotch tape and Elmer’s glue, but it works.  I put a lot of effort into this project. 

Intro Module:  First impressions are vital.  My objective was to convey suspense with the silence and black screen when the “The makers of the smash hit series Uncharted present” appears.  I also wanted it to hang around for a little bit too long, leaving the player wondering whether it might be bugged or something... and then suddenly the main title poster explodes onto the screen, playing a loud musical chord, mirroring the “chord” of colors of the rainbow in the background.  Then, “An interstellar journey through time and space begins with you” fades in, inviting the player into this universe, and the release date of “6 | 14 | 73” fades in not far behind, telling the player when to direct their anticipation.  By the way, the real life Last of Us was released on 6/14/2013.  Also, I considered making the 70s ESRB code and the three companies at the bottom right fade in as well, but I ran into technical issues, and I thought that applying a fade effect to it would draw attention to it, despite it being the least important detail of the poster.  So, I thought it best to sneak it in when the player’s attention was focused on the rainbow, the musical chord, and the title.

Menu Module:  The main hub of the game.  In order to make THE LAST OF US and “voyage” clickable, I needed to make them separate objects and manually place them.  Also, the orange plaque THE LAST OF US sits on is also a separate object to allow the Chris Hadfield easter egg to hide under it.  So, instead of “An interstellar voyage through time and space begins with you” it’s really “An interstellar                  through time and space begins with you” with “voyage” just stuck in there as its own thing.

Text Crawl:  I don’t have much to say about this module, but I like that text crawls are aesthetically associated with sci-fi movies of the 70s and 80s.

Exploration Game:  I think science fiction is fundamentally about exploration and the unknown.  My technical ability and time were limited, so I thought I would just do a little narrative minigame with rudimentary graphics about exploring a few interesting planets.  At least I hope they’re interesting.  I tried to draw from a variety of different inspirations from real life Earth culture and mythology.  I thought that this would be the hardest module to code, but it was really around third.  If I were to rank the difficulty of creating each module from hardest to easiest, I would put them in this order:  Intro, Menu, Exploration, and Text Crawl. 

Music Sources

Here are the music sources that I used.  I totally acquired them legally and didn’t just rip them off YouTube.

> The intro chord sound is from the beginning of the song Breathing Underwater by Metric.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZuLsz4yPPM

> Text Crawl Music:  Final Dream by TOTO from the Dune (1984) soundtrack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2WAdDwpR44

> Default exploration minigame music:  Space Oddity by David Bowie (2015 Instrumental Mix)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtBItBCZsvU

> Easter egg exploration minigame music:  Space Oddity by David Bowie, performed by Commander Chris Hadfield.  Posted by YouTube Channel Rare Earth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo