- Game information
Game Name: Backchat
Game positioning: Narrative-oriented visual novel + Dialogue Sentence Construction Puzzle Platformer (mainly for stress relief)
Target users: Target users: Individuals aged 14 to 25, who enjoy narrative games and indie games. Or players who are concerned about mental health and the autism community, including the autism patient group and those involved in education and charity.
Core design objective: Core design objective: Through an interactive game mechanism, enable ordinary players to understand the social communication difficulties faced by the autistic community. At the same time, provide an emotional projection environment for autistic players, creating a low-pressure atmosphere, allowing them to overcome social challenges in real life through social interaction in the game. The entire game’s story revolves around the protagonist’s successful transfer to the second grade of junior high school at the age of 11, as well as the process of social integration with old friend Taylor. It accurately depicts the state of autistic individuals, characterized by distraction, difficulties in communication and language expression.
Core Design Pillars
Mechanism as narrative: All gameplay is designed based on some of the characteristics possessed by individuals with autism, such as “difficulty in social communication, inability to concentrate, and delayed language organization”. The main gameplay involves sentence assembly, falling leaves interference, and sudden shifts in attention, aiming to recreate the real social predicament faced by individuals with autism in real-life social situations.
Emotional authenticity: The narrative focuses on the daily trivial matters of the protagonist and his old friend Tyler in school life, featuring the awkwardness of reuniting after a long separation, social tension, the process of resolving misunderstandings, mutual healing, and the resulting relief and warmth.
Visual Symbolization: Retain the original color symbols of the shapes, add dynamic visual interference of fallen leaves, and incorporate six color feedback bonus effects.
Accessibility First: The entire process supports rhythm adjustment, leaf interference switch, prompt switch, visual enhancement, ensuring that players of different cognitive levels can enjoy a smooth experience. Core gameplay features: Real-time non-pause dialogue and puzzle-solving + Leaf attention interference mechanism + Sentence combination fixed scoring mechanism. It abandons complex relationships among multiple characters and focuses on the in-depth emotional narrative of a single friend.
Core experience advantages: Low threshold and high immersion, can pause and save at any time, the operation only involves dragging + clicking + clearing leaves, no failure design, all choices are accepted, only affecting the relationship outcome with Tyler, zero psychological burden and pressure.
- Worldview
Worldview Setting
Time: Modern era, an ordinary middle school campus, from Monday to Friday, five school days per week
Scene: Classroom, corridor, cafeteria, school gate, library
Core atmosphere: A sense of strangeness and unease, the awkwardness of reuniting with old friends, subtle attempts and kindness, gradually achieving harmony.
Narrative tone: Calm, delicate, healing, genuine empathy, focusing on the simple and pure friendship repair process between two teenagers
Character Setting
(1) Protagonist (Player-controlled)
Age: 11 years old, in the second grade of junior high school
Identity: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), new transfer student
Core Dilemma: Difficulty adapting to the social rhythms of others, difficulty organizing language quickly, easily distracted by external factors and unable to listen to others’ conversations, habitually pretends to be someone else to meet others’ expectations of him, has a sense of familiarity and social longing for his childhood friend Tyler.
Behavioral Logic: Silent observation, cautious response, easily distracted, needs to piece together words one by one to express his thoughts, becomes nervous in the face of Tyler’s enthusiasm, afraid of making mistakes, and afraid of losing his only old friend.
(2) Tyler (Childhood Friend)
Personality: Outgoing, talkative, fast-talking, with a quick mind, popular, holds a childhood bond with the protagonist, truly friendly, but straightforward and occasionally confused by the protagonist’s silence, delayed responses, and miscommunication. He won’t deliberately accommodate.
Dialogue Characteristics: Fast-paced, with topics changing rapidly.
Relationship Development: The only social relationship throughout the game. It’s a repairable childhood friendship that can develop into a close and intimate friendship, or it can gradually become distant due to the protagonist’s persistent miscommunication and delayed responses, reverting to a normal classmate relationship or even drifting apart.
Game Structure
Overall Process: 5 days of campus life, 4 fixed scenes each day, the complete process lasts approximately 10 minutes. The entire process only triggers interactive dialogues with Tyler and does not involve any other NPC storylines.
Daily fixed scenarios: Morning class, lunch break, afternoon class, after school. Each scenario triggers 1-2 encounters with Tyler regularly.
The plot rhythm is adapted to the modification mechanism:
Day 1: Strangers’ reunion, extremely tense, falling leaves have the least interference, familiar sentence construction + leaf gameplay. Tyler initiates conversation, testing the reunion.
Day 2: Gradually getting familiar, unlocking tone selection, falling leaf interference slightly increases, minor communication misalignment and misunderstandings occur.
Day 3: Tyler interacts more frequently, speaking speed increases, the number of falling leaves blocking increases, interference becomes stronger, frequent keyword answering tests attention and expression ability.
Day 4: The key day for relationship differentiation, high scores and correct responses bring closer friendship, low scores and misaligned responses widen the distance. Falling leaves randomly and densely interfere, reaching the peak of difficulty.
Day 5: The conclusion settlement day. Based on the cumulative scores over 5 days, unlock the corresponding Tyler-exclusive ending and illustration.
Core conflict: Inner conflict of the protagonist (desire vs difficulty in language organization, focus on social interaction vs tendency to lose concentration) External conflict (Tyler’s fast social pace vs protagonist’s slow information processing) Emotional conflict (desire to restore old friendship vs fear of communication mistakes leading to estrangement)
- Detailed design of the core game mechanics
Core mechanism: Leaf fall interference, sentence construction, lack of concentration
The original intention of the mechanism design: To simulate the distracted attention of autistic individuals during social interactions, with an especially high sensitivity to external disturbances. By using fallen leaves to block the words, it reflects the inability to focus attention on the actual situation of the conversation, concretizing the cognitive pressure during social interactions, and strengthening the players’ empathy.
Leaf Fall Mechanism Trigger Rules
1. Trigger Timing: Every time the sentence composition question stage is entered, after the fragment words are refreshed, a leaf fall blocking effect is automatically generated. The conversation does not pause throughout, and the interference increases with the number of days.
2. Leaf Fall Blocking Logic: Randomly falling leaves will cover the words. After being blocked, players cannot see the words and must manually clear the interference to answer.
3. Leaf Quantity Difficulty Curve: Day 1 (2-3 leaves, sparse), Day 2 (3-4 leaves), Day 3 (4-6 leaves), Day 4 (6-8 leaves, dense blocking), Day 5 (5-7 leaves, comprehensive difficulty).
Sentence Construction Mechanism Trigger Rules
1. Trigger Method: Forced trigger by the dialogue plot + Random trigger by the scene
2. Trigger Timing: 2-3 seconds after entering the scene, when the NPC approaches → Dialogue box appears → Start the conversation
3. Dialogue Rules: The conversation can be paused at any time, NPC lines are displayed, and the player responds
Detailed Rules of the Sentence Construction System
Fragment Types:
Basic Vocabulary: I, You, Good, Like, Together, Sorry, etc.
Special Fragments: Emojis, Simple Portraits (figure 1)
Figure 1
Sentence construction capacity: It is determined by the length of the original sentence and gradually increases over time (the protagonist gradually overcomes difficulties)
Operation Procedure:
1. Randomly refresh vocabulary fragments (including distractors) at the bottom.
2. Players click the fragments to the sentence composition area. Supports sequence adjustment, withdrawal, and clearing.
3. Click the send button to submit, then enter the judgment.
4. Judgment completed → NPC feedback → Change in friendship level → Proceed to the next interaction.
Sentence difficulty curve:
As the friendship level increases or decreases, the difficulty of sentence construction will also increase or decrease accordingly: When the friendship level reaches 10, the NPC will increase the probability of asking questions and the difficulty of the questions. When the friendship level becomes negative, the NPC will avoid having conversations with the protagonist and will reduce the probability of speaking and avoid discussing topics of concern.
Scoring Rules
- Each question is worth 3 points. Each question is associated with 1 to 3 specific core keywords. For each correct keyword answered, 1 point is awarded. For a correct sentence, 3 points are given.
2. No keyword match (0 correct words): A fixed deduction of 1 point is made, which is the only global deduction rule.
3. No grammar, ambiguous context determination: All are based on the preset keyword matching. The rules are unified and without deviation. Example: For a dialogue question where Tyler asks “Why didn’t you come to school yesterday?”, the keywords bound are [“Yesterday”, “Absence”, “Nothing”, “Next time”]. If the player spells out “Yesterday”, 1 point is awarded. Accumulate multiple keywords for cumulative scoring.
Feedback Performance
Positive Feedback: A “+3” is displayed next to the answer box (indicating an increase in friendship level), and the NPC will respond with praise-related lines such as “nice”, “good”, etc.; Negative Feedback: A “-1” appears next to the answer box (indicating a decrease in friendship level), and the awkward conversation will end prematurely or the topic will be changed.
- Attraction System
Numerical Rules
Range of single-character attraction: 0 – 50 points (hidden value, not displayed in real time)
Initial value: 3 points for each NPC (basic friendliness)
Daily settlement: Display the attraction change bar (↑/↓/—)
Cumulative rule: Positive + 3, negative – 1, neutral + 1, maximum ±20 points per day for a single character
Content Influenced by Attraction
1. Dialogue Content: High attraction → More concerned about the protagonist, more topics discussed; Low attraction → Brief and perfunctory
2. Trigger Probability: High attraction → Actively seek out the protagonist; Low attraction → Avoid the protagonist
3. Ending Illustration: Directly determines the type of ending and the content of the illustration
- Complete Game Loop Design
Real-time Core Loop
Scene loading → NPC generation → Dialogue initiation → Fragmented word refresh → Leaf cover refresh → Player clears leaf interference → Assemble sentence with word fragments → Submission judgment → Keyword scoring → Performance feedback → Affinity update → Scene advancement
Daily Cycle
Morning class interaction → Lunch break interaction → Afternoon class interaction → After-school interaction → Daily score summary → Automatic save → Unlock for the next day
Meta-game Loop
5-day Process → Favor Accumulation → Outcome Determination → Outcome Illustration + Plot Conclusion → Conclusion Presentation → Game Over / Replay
- Support and Guidance Mechanism
New Player Guidance (Throughout Day 1)
1. Text prompts: Drag and drop fragments, form sentences, send
2. Highlighting prompts: Key fragments glow
3. Error tolerance: No penalty for the first mistake, provide correct direction prompts
4. Slower pace: NPC speech speed reduced by 50%, window period extended by 100%
Daily Assistance
Hint Button: Click to reveal 1 correct fragment (limited to 3 times per day)
Clear Button: Clear the sentence assembly area with one click and reassemble
Pause Function: Can pause the conversation and resume after a break (essential for accessibility)