For Crying Out Loud
"For Crying Out Loud" was my senior thesis from my time at SCAD. Before time restaints became a problem, the film was planned to be a point-n-click choose-your-own-destiny video game. Already trying to turn my animation degree towards game design before getting out of the gates. In the end, I took the longest route and created a knee-slapping-funny short film.
It's not a video game, but it's a great example of my creativity for coming up with branching paths. You can watch the full film here. But, warning, it's very, very silly. I don't recommend watching if you hate laughing.
"This crybaby has one goal in life: ruin everything. It is up to the main character, Toots, and her computer mouse sidekick to silence the crying child by any means necessary."
Above is a rough map of the different branches. The purple circles would be one of the four traditional endings, and the red circles would be special endings. The cyan path is the path used in the film.
Like the film, clickable buttons would have been available for the player to pick their own decision and path. The game would have been available as a flash game and a series of YouTube videos with clickable annotations. The other routes were roughly storyboarded, but time was limited. I eventually decided to cut multiple paths to spend more time on quality.
Below I included a chunk of the game not used in the film. Press one of the buttons underneath or one of the annotations in the video to move on. There is no sound in these clips.
I wanted the player to feel like they had control over the narrative intentionally, but as the game went on, the decisions would reveal to be failures. The player would learn that they never had complete control of the narrative. No matter the player's path, the game would produce a random ending from four similar but different clips. It was secretly a very well-disguised metaphor for depression. Most senior theses were moody; I just wanted my moody thesis to be funny.