JESS MOLLOY - Portfolio

SPACE EX

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Space Ex is a dialogue-heavy visual novel with a focus on replayability. Developed by a team from UK, US, and Brazil for the Women Game Jam 2020, the theme was 'Together even apart'.

A 2D pixel art image of a anthropomorphic moon and earth. They are standing by closed elevator doors, while a dialogue box appears on the bottom of the screen.

Released: August 2020

Genre: Visual Novel

Engine: Ren'py

Team Size: 8

Duration: 10 days

Platform: PC, Mac

Website: jessabellerina.itch.io/space-ex

Created during the Women Game Jam 2020, Space Ex is a visual novel with branching dialogue that leads to 3 alternate endings. You play as the Moon, personified, living in an apartment block with the other planets in the solar system.

The premise of the game was an idea created by the entire team, which was iterated on during the 10 days.

Roles and Responsibilities

Project Management.
- I managed the team across various disciplines, languages, and time zones.
- Outlined, scheduled, and tracked tasks.
- Arranged stand-ups.
- Promoted and arranged talks between roles (Art, UI, Music).
- During the development, there were moments when I pushed for the plan and moments when I adapted.

Game Design & UX Flow
- Created and maintained GDD, and Game Flow.
- Designed the Dialogue Mechanics. (Hidden weighted point system for endings. Hidden point system: 3 different endings (Good, Neutral, Negative)

2D pixel art of the moon and the earth, sitting and talking in a coffee shop.

Ending 1: 'Positive' ending. (Art by Isadora de Lara)

A 2D pixel art image showing the moon sitting on her bed eating ice cream alone. She is crying, while a black cat is sitting beside her.

Ending 3: 'Negative' ending. (Art by Isadora de Lara)

Showcase Video

The video on the right shows the project's 2D Artist Isadora de Lara presenting the game to the Women Game Jam panel and creators.

Game Design & UX Flow

Using Dating Simulators as a reference, I designed a "simple" mechanic where a player's responses would create a score that would dictate which ending they would experience. There were 3 endings, which we considered positive, neutral, and negative.

If we had more time, I would have liked to include "important" dialogue events, where some of the responses had a much higher / lower score than typical dialogue. For example, insulting an NPC would decrease the overall score dramatically leaving very little chance of them accepting a date.

Initial Game Flow and Dialogue Tree

An image of a Miro board (or white board) showing the planned Game Flow. It shows what the player will see when they start the game, each day, through to the ending.

Game Flow: After the dialogue tree was simplified.

Left Image: An example of the gameplay loop for a single day including the dialogue, score, and progression.

Above Image: An image showing the total score calculation and what result (image and text) should appear.

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