Love You More

Love You More is 3D first person narrative game, in which you play as Connor, a middle-aged man, who visits a memory-restoration clinic in order to relive the days he had with his now-estranged son Bry. In the game, you control Connor as he gets to relive his cherished memories and routine joys, while being faced with the darker parts of how his actions shaped their distant relationship.

The project was made for the second semsester collaborative project module in the Cologne Game Lab.

My Responsibilities

  • Designing the main system on which the narrative was built

  • Conceptualizing and crafting the story, characters and plot

  • Designing the content and gameplay of each interaction and how they connect with one another to create a well-paced narration

  • Implementing in-engine a lot of the small interactions and shaders, as well as assembling the working final scene

Narrative Design

The game’s narrative design is built around immersing the player in the feelings of nostalgia and longing. The way I set out to do this was mainly threefold:

  • Have a cozy warm atmosphere and a lived-in home environment (courtesy of our terrific artists).

  • Unfold the memories through performing actions that are experientiatlly or culturally associated with nostalgia – childhood games, shaking polaroids, birthday decorating.

  • Have the character remember things fragmentarily, as thoughts, leading to a more engaging presentation of his inner monologue.

Story

For the story, I wanted to focus on a single personal relationship that can be sufficiently explored within the 2 months timeframe we were given to finish the project.

Through the different chapters of the story, Connor, a single father, is brought to peel back the layers and look beyond the comforting veil of nostalgia. He there grapples with the repressed parts of the relationship – his emotional unavailbility, hesitation to support his son and ultimately their estrangement as Bry does not come home one night when his father was preparing a surprise birthday party. At the end, Connor’s only way forward is to embrace the past for what it really was and find a way to let go.