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Final Year Project
May 2021 - Jul 2021
BERRY
An educational visual novel game.
For my Final Year Project, I created an educational visual novel game named Berry from scratch to introduce the concept of self-compassion to students, and conducted a research report on it.
"Educational Visual Novel: Learning Self-compassion through Playing"
In the making, I first conducted a literature review on adolescence, self-esteem, and self-compassion. Then, I wrote a game storyline adapted from the Velveteen Rabbit centred around the three elements of self-compassion: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.
In a nutshell, Berry is about an abandoned toy rabbit that tries to make its way back to its owner.
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Then, I reached out to a friend specialising in game development to aid me in coding with the Monogatari Engine. While the coding is underway, I illustrated the assets for the game. These included the character sprites, scenes, title screen, and logo.
The game was then uploaded to itch.io.
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A survey was included at the end of the game to analyse Berry’s efficiency in raising awareness on self-compassion.
It proved to be successful, with more than half of the respondents interpreting self-compassion accurately, identifying 3 methods of practising self-compassion, and finding Berry to be an engaging game.
Berry fulfilled my wish of making a game. As an avid enjoyer of RPG-makers, puzzles, and visual novels, I've long realised the potential of sending a message that games have. So, creating a story-based game with a meaningful intent was a personal goal of mine. Taking advantage of the fact that my diploma's Final Year Project is a free topic, I pulled in a friend to start my 2-man project.
With only knowledge in psychology and basic game art design, diving headfirst into coding was difficult. However, I soon learned to write basic scripts and understand the rules behind a visual novel. Spending nights researching the topic of self-compassion, writing scripts and working on character designs, it was a gruelling process. Yet, the sense of accomplishment and knowledge that came with it makes it all worth the work.
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