UIUX | INTERACTIVE DESIGNER | TECHNOLOGIST
STATUS 0
Choose Your Own Adventure Horror Game
Status 0 (2018)
Unity programming: Joey
Music: Dan Ning
Asset Illustrations: Vania, Dan Ning
Sprite Sheets: Vania
Interaction Arrangement: Joey
Level Design: Joey
Cutscenes: Joey
Have you heard of "Hikikomori"?
According to the National Institutes of Health, Hikikomori ("Shut-in" in Japanese) is a form of severe social withdrawal, characterized by adolescents and young adults who become recluses in their parents' homes, unable to work or go to school for months or years. With society's perception of them reduced to the lowest rank, their status is "0".
I had the pleasure of working with 2 fellow weebs who shared my enjoyment with horror and the unexpected! With a concept born from Dan Ning's obsession with games like "Doki Doki Literature Club" and my own obsession with 2D games that have bad endings such as "Corpse Party", we decided to create a game inspired by horror dating sims! It also helped that we were all weebs infatuated with Japanese culture.
<Status 0> is a Unity2D choose-your-own-adventure game revolves around the protagonist who has always been an isolated hikikomori who has an obsession with 2D idols. With an intense hatred for the real world and a dream for the 2D reality, he gets absorbed into his computer and isekai-s into an anime high school. After finding himself the center of the popular clique in school like a dream come true, the perfect world gradually starts unraveling on its own.
The storytelling focuses on the use of symbols with a simple, linear storyline to progress the visual novel-gameplay. The pastel and hand-sketched art style we chose was also meant to emulate a children storybook to highlight the fact that this is a fantasy world born from the player's imagination. However, going into the bad end will result in extremely ugly, messy and high contrast images being displayed instead, as the beautiful and pure fantasy kingdom has now collapsed to the point of no return.