Zero Hour

"Zero Hour" is designed to bring the wonder of the sci-fi genre to the most simplistic, pitting a simple space engineer vs 3 deadly off-world pirates, in very easy to understand selections without feeling bland or repetitive. 

Goals:

• Simple, not easy – Simplistic point-and-click adventure game with simple choices but plenty of versatility. It was designed with multiple endings in mind, all while avoiding overcomplication.
• Modular processing – A branching story path with surprisingly few branches, thanks to well designed usage of variables and constants
• Ambiguous character – The main hero is never referred to by name or by pronoun, the character was written with the players in mind, allowing them to take control as themselves, and not a random NPC type.

Examples:

• A Fire Extinguisher is obtained early on from the Transmissions room, should the player pick it up, it can be used in a variety of ways, such as fighting enemies or solving puzzles; just because an object has a purpose, it does not mean that will be its only purpose.
• A single branch is used several times due to a series of conditionals and if/else statements, such as creating a series of branch in the Transmissions room, despite having only 2 exit paths, I created 3 or 4 reasons to return to the room.
• Much of the character’s dialogue is explicitly androgynous, allowing all players to feel like projecting themselves into the story as much as they can, for further immersion.
• The Central HUB for the rotating disk of the station proves a popular place, as it is revisited in many varieties, much like a HUB would typically be: