Starved for Company

Starved For Company is a game where you as a player take on the role of an individual who belongs to a high risk group and for whom Covid-19 therefore poses a greater threat. When the pandemic suddenly hits, everyone is isolated. As time goes by, the number of people who are infected decreases, and people begin going outside again. In the end, everyone except you is walking around outside in the sun and interacting with each other, but as you belong to a high risk group you must stay in your voluntary isolation. A timer counts down the time until the pandemic is over, but never reaches zero, as people are not keeping a distance and keep infecting each other. As your isolation is voluntary, you can leave whenever you want to, but since you are at high risk, you must be careful not to get infected. 

The main aim of the game is to create empathy and make the player reflect on their own behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic. This is done by having a design focused on creating an immersive game world and giving the player the experience of being a high-risk person during the pandemic. 

These design decisions are expressed throughout the game. Probably the most important design decision we made was to make the game first-person. This dramatically increases the feeling of immersion and supports mimicry in the game as the player comes to identify themselves with the playable character. We also worked a lot with visual and audio cues along with the concept of agency and, for example, used these to create a sense of temptation for the player to go outside. We further added to the feeling of immersion by adding footballs and a swing that the player can interact with, and agency in giving the player the choice to leave isolation. We also used colors to make the park look very colorful, bright and tempting, while the isolation space is grey and dull. However, if the player chooses to leave their isolation and walk outside after the pandemic begins, the colours will change and become darker to indicate that this is a dangerous move. This reveals that being outside is not very fun at all, when you are risking your life to be out there. Finally, we chose to use natural sounds, instead of e.g. music, to make the game experience as close to real life as possible. This choice of making the game space more realistic is also intended to make the player more likely to experience immersion and put themselves in the shoes of the playable character. 

All six elements of the game design canvas must come together to make a game. In Starved for Company we focused especially on the elements of theme, spaces and player experiences in order to create a game space for empathy, personal reflection and growth. 

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Game Controls: 

Move: WASD or arrow keys

Look around: Mouse

Sprint: Hold down shift

Jump: Space

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NB: The game can only be played on windows computers.