THE ANTARCTIC SPHERE

OVERVIEW

The Antarctic Sphere is a sci-fi narrative game where you translate an alien language in order to communicate with a giant sphere discovered in the depths of Antarctica.

Trailer Prototype

WHAT DID I WORK ON?

Pitch & concept document for funding

I created several pitch and concept documents in order to obtain funding from the CNC. My application went before a committee of industry professionals and was awarded the funds.

Designing a glyph translation system

I designed a glyph translation system, which I then programmed and integrated into a gameplay prototype.

Designing a conversational system

I also designed a conversational system with a dedicated custom parser that allows the player to converse freely with a non-human entity and get hundreds of different answers from it.

Creating a conlang designed for gameplay

The imaginary language was created specifically to meet the needs of the gameplay. It is made up of 37 unique glyphs representing specific concepts, each with its own visual and sound design, and has been designed to allow hundreds of possible conversations with the sphere.

Designing of a fragmental narrative system

I designed a narrative system entirely made of fragments, so that each player can discover the game’s story in their own way, in the order they wishes and without restrictions. The game is non-linear and composed of several narrative layers.

A story entirely made of glyphs

I designed the game to tell a whole story from conversations formed solely from glyphs created for the game. This was a strong narrative constraint that gave the story its flavor.

Writing 1000+ unique narrative entries

I wrote over 1000 unique narrative entries, barks, dialogues and diary entries to tell this story (entirely written in English). Each conversation with the sphere triggers a unique response from the sphere, a reflection from the character as well as a diary entry.

Storylet & Ink scripting

I designed an additional narrative layer of the game that functions as a storylet, and did Ink scripting to trigger narrative content based on unique conditions and player progression.

Creating a GDD for the CNC

After obtaining funding from the CNC, I had to create a complete game design document defining the game systems, world building, story…

Development of a 4-6 hour game prototype

Finally, I designed and programmed a 4-6 hour gameplay prototype containing all the game’s systems and mechanics: translation system, conversational system, unique narrative entries, visual and sound glyph designs…

GAME PILLARS

YOU ARE THE FIRST TRANSLATOR

The game makes you feel like you're the first person to discover and translate an unknown language.

A STORY MADE OF FRAGMENTS

The story isn't linear or made up of branches, but of non-chronological narrative fragments.

A CONVERSATIONAL GAME

The experience offers an hesitant dialogue with a non-human entity, radically different from us.

INTIMATE EXPERIENCE OF SCIENCE

The game is an invitation to the scientific method and its values: caution, reflection, curiosity...

One of the design documents I created to obtain fundings from the CNC (FR).

PITCH & GAME LOOP

The player takes on the role of an archaeologist and language specialist sent to Antarctica to study a mysterious giant sphere found beneath the glaciers of the South Pole.

The pitch

It all begins when a giant sphere, made of an unknown material, is discovered under the ice of Antarctica. Nobody knows what it is or where it comes from. It seems to date back several million years.

As you study it, the sphere transforms itself and absorbs you.

Inside, alone, you must discover the story of the sphere and unravel its mysteries: where does the sphere comes from? Is it alive? How long has it been on Earth? Why does it communicate with you?

The game loop

The game loop works as follows:

By absorbing the player, the sphere introduces them to 3 unknown glyphs.
The player will have to translate these first 3 glyphs.
Once the translation of the 3 glyphs has been validated by the game, the player can use them to form sentences and communicate with the sphere.
If the sentence formed by the player makes sense and the sphere has an answer to give, it will use glyphs to form its answer, which the player will have to decipher.
Each exchange with the sphere will trigger a unique monologue from the character: thoughts, theories, revelations about his history… Each exchange also concludes with a new diary entry.
If an answer from the sphere contains previously undiscovered glyphs, these will be added to the player’s list of glyphs to translate.
Once the glyphs have been translated, they can be used by the player to form new sentences, thus uncovering new pieces of the sphere’s history and progressing through the game.

The goal of the game is to discover and translate all the glyphs, and unravel the mysteries of the sphere.

A LANGUAGE MADE OF GLYPHS

The main goal of the game is to translate an unknown language and use it to communicate with the sphere. The language of the game was therefore created first and foremost with the aim of making it a fun language to translate and use for communication.

A language for play

The game’s imaginary language was created with several imperatives in mind: it must embody a plausible non-human language, be designed to be translatable by players who are not experts in linguistics, and be a functional language enabling minimalist communication with a non-human life form. It is made up of 37 glyphs, each with its own sound.

The chosen words correspond to concepts essential to communication, and the language is presented in the game’s diegesis itself as a language created to establish communication with a different thinking species.

Nominal and verbal forms

Like the Toki Pona language from which it draws its inspiration, it is a minimalist, playful language with which to express oneself through trial and error and experimentation. Each word has a nominal and a verbal form, effectively doubling the game’s vocabulary and thus the possibilities for communication.

For example, the glyph meaning “me” in nominal form becomes “to possess” in verbal form, while the word meaning “you” in nominal form becomes “to give” in verbal form.

Bracket-words: a narrative hard gate

In the Toki Pona language, it’s possible to create a new word by combining two words. For example, combining the word jan, meaning “person”, with the word utala, meaning “to fight”, creates the word jan utala, meaning “warrior”.

Similarly, there’s a system of bracket-words in the game, allowing you to add the meanings of two words together to designate a particular concept.

For example, the expression “solar system” is not available in the glyph list, but can be created by combining the words [group+planet], while the word “galaxy” can be created by combining [group+star]. These bracket-words can also designate concepts linked to the sphere’s lore and which have no equivalent in our language, such as the word [gather+sound], different from simply using the words “gather” and “sound” together without brackets, and which designates the chant the sphere will emit to initiate the gathering of all the spheres scattered within numerous solar systems (for reasons the player will discover in the game).

This bracket-words system is also a way for the game to ensure that a player doesn’t stumble across an important scenario revelation by accident. In effect, it will act as a narrative bottleneck, since most of the game’s key revelations will only appear when the player uses bracket-words such as [gather+sound], which they won’t hear about until they’ve progressed far enough through the game, and which they won’t be able to get the idea of using by accident.

Designing the 37 glyphs

A list of 37 glyphs was created to meet the game’s narrative and gameplay needs. The challenge was to ensure that the vocabulary was rich enough to allow the creation of many different sentences, but restrictive enough not to increase the possibilities exponentially and make the experience impossible to control.

Their visual design was conceived to be distinct from human cultural references, while still being translatable by a human player.

The translation system

The game features a list of glyphs that the player must translate. To do this, at the start of the game, the player is given a list of words equivalent to the translations of the various glyphs in the game (also mixed with incorrect words to make the game more complex) and, as the game progresses, they must associate the corresponding translation with each of the glyphs. Note that they can only translate the glyphs he has discovered.

To prevent players from cheating or finding the translation of a glyph at random by brute-forcing the solution, the game requires them to present 3 correct glyph translations before they are validated, an anti-cheating system inspired by the game Return of the Obra Dinn.

To choose a glyph translation, the player will be able to collect a number of clues and rely on the information available in the diary:

They can consult all the sentences of the sphere in which the glyph has appeared, and try to decipher its meaning from the various contexts in which it has been used.
They can observe the glyph’s design and try to decipher what it symbolizes.
They can also compare it with other glyphs that have already been translated, and use their similarities or dissimilarities to deduce its meaning.
They can listen to the sound associated with the glyph, which can be a valuable clue regarding its meaning.
They can also draw on any theories or remarks noted by the character in his journal, and unlocked throughout the game as a result of their actions and discoveries.

The conversational system

In the game’s main screen, the player has at their disposal a panel comprising all the glyphs he has discovered and correctly translated so far. The player can click on each glyph to try and compose a sentence, thus initiating a new communication with the sphere.

The conversational system works according to a simple combinatorial logic: to create a sentence, the player can use one or more glyphs, up to 8, in their nominal or verbal form. They can also combine two glyphs by using bracket-words.

The player's sentences

Here are some examples of sentences that the player could form:

communication
me+different+you
quantity+time+you+inside+this+[group+planet]
quantity+time+me+inside+you
quantity+sphere+inside+this+planet

The sphere's sentences

If the sentence composed by the player has a meaning, and if the sphere has an answer to it, the player can discover the sphere’s answer and try to decipher it.
To communicate, the sphere uses the same language as the player, and produces sometimes cryptic or ambiguous sentences, which must be patiently deciphered by the player. They can contain up to 12 glyphs.

Here are some examples of how the sphere might respond to the sentences introduced above:

communication
- you+communicate+me+and+me+communicate+you
me+different+you
- you+and+me+different+but+you+and+me+communicate
quantity+time+you+inside+this+[group+planet]
- me+inside+this+[group+planet]+before+life+inside+this+[group+planet]
quantity+time+me+inside+you
- time+not+moving+inside+sphere
quantity+sphere+inside+this+planet
- me+only+sphere+inside+this+planet+but+other+sphere+inside+other+planet

NARRATIVE DESIGN & WRITING

The game is set in Antarctica, in the near future. The melting of the glaciers leads to the discovery of a strange sphere, made of an unknown material.

World building

The choice of this setting deliberately addresses the issue of global warming, a subject that will be tackled in various ways throughout the course of the game. The choice of setting events in the near future, on a date that the majority of players will know in their lifetime, invites us to consider the problem as current rather than remote from our everyday considerations.

The sphere

As players interact with the sphere, they can discover its history and the secrets it holds. Given the geological strata in which it was discovered, it appears to have been on Earth for several million years.

Where does it come from? What is its history? Is it alive? Why is it in Antarctica? Is it alone, or are there other spheres? Why is it communicating with you? These are just some of the questions the player will have to answer by developing theories, making contact with the sphere and studying its history.

Conversations with the sphere

The player will discover the history of the sphere and the reason for its presence in Antarctica through exchanges with it. Given the player’s freedom to experiment by composing their own sentences, the game’s main story is designed to be discovered in a non-linear way, like a narrative puzzle that the player will have to piece together by deciphering the sphere’s answers and working out their own theories.

The game’s narrative context makes this hesitant form of communication credible, as it puts the player in the situation of establishing contact with a life form radically different from them. The deliberately limited number of words available to the player to form functional sentences will force them to use their imagination to translate the idea they have in their mind into a correct sentence, and this form of reflection will be an integral part of the gameplay experience.

The archaeologist

The player character is an archaeologist specializing in ancient languages. The game deliberately does not reveal his country of origin. All we know is that English is not his mother tongue. This character has a reasoned nature, and is animated by great curiosity and a scientific spirit.

Although he is aware of the importance of his research and translation work for the future of mankind, he sometimes uses humor to combat the feeling of isolation that consumes him, alone inside the sphere.

Character's monologues and thoughts

Each exchange with the sphere will trigger a new monologue scene, in which the character will share his questions, theories or revelations about his own story. These will take the form of relatively short textual scenes that the player can choose to read again in the diary. They will reveal more about the character’s life and state of mind, as well as his scientific theories and worldview. These scenes form the core of the game’s narrative experience.

Storylet system & Ink scripting

An additional layer of narration is compoosed of storylets: narrative content are triggered according to unique conditions as the player progresses through the game. This narrative layer is managed by Ink, using advanced scripting.

For example, when the game obtains the information that the player has discovered a specific piece of the story, it can trigger an additional scene in which the archaeologist shares his thoughts on this new discovery.

The diary

I’ve also written a number of diary entries, which reveal the archaeologist’s story prior to the start of the game. The player can learn that the archaeologist was contacted by strange agents and flew to Antarctica, where he joined a scientific base built specifically to study the sphere.

GAMEPLAY PROTOTYPE

In order to verify the game’s functionality and test its systems, I spent several months developing a 4-6 hour gameplay prototype.

A fully playable prototype

The prototype is fully functional and integrates all the game’s systems:

The visual and sound design of all 37 glyphs.
The glyph translation system.
The conversational system for forming sentences, and the ability for the sphere to respond to these exchanges with its own sentences.
The journal, in which the character takes notes, and which serves as a means of consulting previously obtained information and keeping track of progress in the game.
A narrative content made up of hundreds of exchanges, characters’ thoughts, diary entries…

The conversational system was fully implemented in the gameplay prototype, and allow players to converse freely with the sphere by forming their own sentences.

The translation system was also fully implemented in the gameplay prototype, and players who playtested the prototype were able to translate the glyphs.