Grand Father Paradox

itch.io

Grand Father Paradox is a narrative-driven, time-bending game where players take on the role of a brilliant scientist attempting to prevent a cosmic catastrophe. As the sun collapses and Earth faces destruction, the protagonist travels back in time to alter the course of history.

Lore

Player is a brilliant scientist who tries to stop a timeline ending cosmic event where the sun collapses and earth gets destroyed. In order to stop this catastrophic event, the player goes back in time, but his grandfather, another scientist, believes in a better future in a different timeline and tries to stop him.

Player accidentally kills his grandfather, causing a grandfather paradox that causes other timelines to get destroyed together with the current timeline as well, resulting in a universe ending cosmic event. Player now needs to talk with timeline souls with timeline fragments to understand what happens and needs to make some decisions that will affect a timeline change for the future.

Souls will talk with player, giving clues about the story, because the player has amnesia. Player needs to complete the empty spaces in the story and try to save the world from cosmic disaster.

Game Design

At the core of the design, player tries to stop timeline chaos by four different parameters (aggression, calm, balance and bonus) these parameters change the chaos level based on calculations and constraints. Parameters are being updated each time player interacts with a soul and after they are being applied they are set to zero again. There are four essential arguments the player can change with actions: aggression, calm and balance.

  • Aggression: Player decides how aggressively chaos level will be reduced. (If too high (>0.2), chaos level will start increasing again. See constraints part.)
  • Calm: Reduces the aggression level.
  • Balance: If balance is zero, the chaos level will be reset. Some souls try player to fail, that’s why they reduce the balance with their suggestions.
  • Bonus: Triggered if player makes the perfect solution and immediately decreases the chaos level.

Strong Points of the Game Design

  • Grandfather Paradox is a well-known paradox.
  • A well-known popular show, Rick and Morty, is very similar in many ways.
  • Limited Time Actions (Fear of Making a Mistake).
  • Immediate Rewards (Feeling of Progression).
  • Reflective Design & Visceral Design used together to create a broken timeline.
  • Dynamic Content (Player has no evidence on what will come next).
  • Mysterious story.
  • Consistent Art Style.
  • Easy to understand the game.

Mechanics

  • Fragment Collection (Triggers Resource Management).
  • Timeline Collapse After Some Time (Triggers Limited Time Actions).
  • Storytelling Mechanics (Triggers Player Engagement and Wanting to Learn More).
  • Soul Summoning, Timeline Extension, and Instant Teleport Mechanics (Triggers Making Reflective Decisions).

Dynamics

  • Resource Management (Connected to Feeling of Progression).
  • Limited Time Actions (Connected to Fear of Making a Mistake).
  • Player Engagement and Wanting to Learn More (Triggers Curiosity).
  • Making Reflective Decisions (Again, Feeling of Progression and Curiosity).

Aesthetics

  • Feeling of Progression.
  • Fear of Making a Mistake.
  • Curiosity.

Reflective Design

Players can see the results of their decisions inside the game as they make different choices. In this game, reflective design is specially added with visceral design, creating a unique combination for players. Reflective design creates a long-term impact, while visceral demonstrates fast, emotional results to the player.

  • Deciding which fragment will be used inside the timeline the player spawned to.
  • Deciding what to do in certain situations in soul conversations; these conversations affect the timeline and have long-term impacts.

Visceral Design

Immediate visuals and sound are displayed to the player to engage them in making more decisions.

  • As the timeline collapses and the player needs to jump to another timeline, the music volume increases (triggering different feelings and making the player hurry even more).
  • Each time a player spawns into a different world, they see different timelines crashing into each other. (This procedural generation was optimized and lost some of its good feeling due to single-threaded WebGL limitations.)
  • Examples of side design components include but are not limited to: text writing SFX, NPC summon SFX and VFX, win/lose SFX, etc.