Story Premise

The narrative follows a young boy with ASD as he transitions to a new school during his 2nd year of high school, at age 11. Friend groups and dynamics are already well-established, so he struggles even more than usual to settle in and form connections, especially since most find him a little offputting.

There are 3 supporting characters in the story:

Tyler

An outgoing young kid that MC knows from primary school: they were split apart when they both started secondary school, and are finally back together again now MC is changing schools. It’s nice to have a friendly face around, but Tyler has grown a lot more popular since primary, and his new group of friends don’t seem to take quite so fondly to MC…

Olivia

A smart and tidy, albeit quite shy girl in MC’s classes. They rarely speak outside of class – and not much in classes either, since both of them are naturally quiet – but they get along okay. She has a decent group of friends outside of class who are much more vocal than her.

Sarah

A tomboyish girl also in MC’s class. Quite loud and outspoken, can seem a little intimidating from the outside but is quite upbeat and friendly when you get to know her. She doesn’t really care much that MC is labelled the “weird” kid. Has a small circle of friends outside of class.

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Game Structure

The game takes place over a single week, split in 5 days of school. Each day is short, and lasts around 5-10 minutes of play time (for the vertical slice, I recommend you make only a single day). Each day will be split into 4 different scenes: morning class, lunch break, afternoon class and after-school.

During some of these scenes, there will be a pre-determined social encounter – otherwise the game will prompt the player with simple text describing the scene (e.g. “You paid close attention during Maths class.”) and move on to the next scene.

At the end of each day, the player is met with a list of characters they have met so far and a bar below each to show how their feelings towards the player have changed, depending on social encounters that occurred in the day. (Attached is a rough mock-up).

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Objective

The game objective is simply to make it through the 5 days while trying to make as postitive of an impression as possible towards certain NPC characters, as shown by the diagram at the end of the final day.

Different feelings towards certain characters can also lead to different endings, which are shown as simple end cards of artwork (e.g. Celeste’s endings).