The Elephant In The Room

Trigger Warning: Themes of - Domestic Abuse, Separation & Childhood Trauma.

**This project is a detailed narrative level design and prototype of ' The Elephant in the Room ‘(a first-person environmental narrative about domestic abuse.)

** Elevator Pitch: "The Elephant in the Room" is a brief, first-person, 3D environmental narrative game with a heavy psychological component. It's a game intended for PC that blends environmental and visual storytelling to highlight the devastating effects of domestic abuse. It follows Grey, an 18-year-old who recently came out of foster care, as they unravel the mystery surrounding their birth parents' mental health and the influence domestic abuse had on driving them into a childhood without them.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Key Features:

• This prototype is built using Unreal Engine 4.
• The game’s narrative is told within a fragmented home environment.
• The game is 3D.
• The story is told through the eyes of an outsider looking in.

The main points of difference between “The Elephant in the Room” and other environmental story games are:

• The player will have free reign of the environment to understand the story.
• The player will not be told through audio and visual clues if they’re on the right path to finishing the game as there will be no “proper” finish to the prototype, but it will include visual clues.
• The story is told through finding notebooks in the environment.
• Text will appear before the player in real time.
• The Game is only over when the player has pieced enough information together to where they know everything. (Finding all the notebooks. - Currently 12 in total.) 
• From interacting enough with the environment, the context of the story will be implied and eventually implicitly understood.
• Because the game is made with the intention to be explored, the player’s decision making becomes a meaningful process and one person's gameplay won't mirror everyone's.
• Some aspects of the project will be 'best estimate' and subject to change until the game is thoroughly prototyped.

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Controls:
“W,A,S, and D”, or The Directional Keys, are used to navigate the home environment.

"E" to Interact. 

"Space Bar" to Jump. 

"Mouse Movement" to look around. 

Download the 7zip. 
Extract the files. 
Play the EXE file. 
ALT F4 to exit the game. 

Development Blog inside the 7Zip.