The Adventurer is a cruise ship aiming to provide a safe and comfortable trip. You, as our respectful Captain, are responsible for taking care of 3 adventurers like you always do—Even with these 3 troublemakers to varying degrees, we trust you to try your best to make sure they are full and alive when they off-board.

Motive

Despite stopping ignoring mental health, most social institutes—such as campuses—treat patients with psychological disorders as troubles and burdens. Instead of providing actual help, institutes work on preventing them from self-injured or suicide at any cost, especially under their supervision. This non-human-oriented attitude only brings fear of expressing or over-supervising without privacy. I would like to develop a simulation game to reflect on that: in The Adventurer, the player will serve as a supervisor who tries to keep 3 NPCs with different psychological disorders able-bodied and alive. Through experience and involvement in executing the supervision, I hope players could eventually understand how this system is broken, and how much unequal power the supervisor has over patients in need.

Inspiration

I was strongly influenced by survival game 60s and file-examination game Papers, Please and That’s not my neighbor. In my play-through of them, I notice that the player was granted with extended power upon NPCs mostly due to endangerment, which includes violation of personal privacy and distribution of living resources. What these mechanics reflect on me was the unequal power of over supervision under special circumstances. As a result, I decided to adopt simulation as the genre for players to impersonally experience the power dynamics between the psychiatrist (supervisor) and patients, with the mechanics of distributing, questioning and inspecting.

Aesthetic

I tended to build a worldview as sophisticated as possible to create immersive experience, empathy, and even narratives in this game. As a result, I decided to correspond with the DND background world building with a special and united aesthetic: the western-fantasy post illustration style. I particularly emphasize the vintage paperlike trait, portraying the mystery of both prescription and NPCs’ privacy (narratives). I also adopted the panelling nature of newspaper and comics, creating clear partitions of various functions.

System

As the Captain of The Adventurer, the player’s daily agenda includes distributing food to NPCs, prescribing them medications, making important decisions for them, and of course, checking in with them daily to always supervise their conditions to prevent them from self-injured or suicide. After multiple playtesting both in Engine and on Paper, I came up with the final version of day-game flow based on the 6 basic Time Slots with specific time of the day and function.

This is an example of a throughout day (Day 2) demonstrating the designed day-game flow and each detailed Time Slot: in each timeslot, the Captain will have different tasks to complete. If players want to achieve a perfect day without any NPCs ending up disabled or dead at the end of the day (Night Action), they need to pay close attention to each Time Slot and complete tasks with insightful judgment.

Scene

There are 3 scenes in The Adventurer, characterized by their partition on function. They are shown as different sections of The Adventurer ship, which the Captain will be navigated across by the Map. I found the 3 scenes system to be far better than the original design of 1 scene system. It creates both variety and a clearer sense of function partition.

Captain Cabin is the home scene—at the fresh start of each round, the player would weak up with the Accounting Journal here. After reviewing the Current State of each NPC and the potential incoming Mails (Special Event), the player could check the progress of this voyage on both Map(Current Day) and Clock (Current Time Slot). There is also a Typewriter with the To-Do List to help the player to understand the Game Flow and an Hourglass to move to the next Time Slot.

Gallery is the main scene—every round’s core mechanics, Catering and Treat, happen here. Before the player moves to the Next Timeslot and starts Catering with the hourglass, the player would check in with each NPC by clicking their individual Painting. In addition, each Food and Treat and its detailed function would be listed at the Menu and Side Menu, referencing for the player’s choice.

Archive is the information scene—each round of information, including Accounting Journal (Historical State), Mails (Happened Special Event) and Personal File of each NPC that indicates their diagnosis and background. The player could always come and check for the historical information or NPC files at the Check In Time Slot.

Characters

I decided to design 3 characters resembling 3 common real-life Psychological Disorders and adopted some of the traits (to my understanding from experience) of them: Bipolar, Anxiety, and Depression. When each of the food distributed in the catering session contains different functions on cheering/calming, each character has their own pattern of getting more or less anxious/depressed. They also own their individual special event that might largely change their state even pattern. With the DND worldview, I also assigned them with the class and race correspondence with their condition and stories.

Thorina is the most unpredictable NPC on board. She represents bipolar in real life, who will be randomly affected by anxiety or depression in each round (50%-50% chance of turning more anxious or depressed). Although she appeared in the ship as the 14-year-old human-bard Thorina Selda Hathersage, her real identity is an adult halfoot magician Thorina Ecarwren.

In fact, Thorina Ecarwren was the magic general in the People’s Republic of Apolica, a halfoot totalitarian regime. After triggering politics-related laws back to her hometown and being reported by her own mother, she fled outside the country with a fake ID. However, the pain of exiling and the possibility of getting caught back persists to be her trauma for life.

Thornina’s Special Event will be triggered after the Day 3 lunch, where the Captain encounters the mandatory inspection when passing Apolica. Although Thorina will have strong reactions and behave to be both anxious and scared, the Captain can not do anything about it. This Special Event would have a strong depression impact on her over the night, signifying the transition of her from mania to depression.

Michael Jr. is a human-paladin representing anxiety disorder in real life, who will be mainly affected by anxiety. In his normal pattern, he will become more anxious and less depressed in each round. His full name is Michael Jr. Von Hessenfeld, taken from his father Michael Sr. Like his father, Michael Jr. is also trained in the Youth League to be the Chevalier of Knights Temple. Although young Micheal Jr. seems to be unsure and anxious about both training and joining the Knights Temple itself, Sir Von Hessenfeld already arranged his son’s future to take his legacy.

Michael Jr.’s Special Event will be triggered after the Day 2 lunch, showing as the Captain receives the Obituary of his father. The Captain can decide whether to give Michael Jr. this mail according to his current state and player’ judgement. If the Obituary is given, Michael Jr, it will have an impact of both depression and anxiety on him. However, it also triggers the dialogue involving his storyline and a lighter pattern of getting anxiety each round.

Eindride Sprusthron is an elf-ranger representing depression in real life, who will be mainly affected by depression. In their normal pattern, they will become less anxious and more depressed in each round. Unlike other NPCs on the ship, Eindride had a squadron before. However, due to the super longevity nature of dark elf, all of the members died long ago. As a result, they suffered from losing their former squadron and blamed themself for that, constantly living in the past and guilt.

Eindride’s Special Event will happen before Day 3 Lunch, where the Captain finds the losing ring of them. They will be both highly impacted by depression and anxiety due to the loss of it, because the ring is the gift from one of their passed-away friends from the former squadron. The Captain can decide whether to give the ring back according to their current state and player’ judgement. If the ring is given back, Eindride will be impacted by huge depression and deduction on anxiety.

Ending

After the Accounting TimeSlot of the 3rd day, the game would enter the audit of ending. Although the NPC’s unstable mental states are constantly treated as the priority during the whole game play, the ending would only be calculated by their physical state. Based on the number of physically unhealthy, disabled and dead NPC, it is possible to reach 6 endings from perfect to awful. The ending will be about and only about the Captain’s career fate, with the easter egg of the information of the Captain finally shown.

Walkthrough