"TO MY DEAR SARAH"
Imagine the possibility of going back in time and reliving old memories with someone dear. This person was a vital part of your life and you have shared many beautiful memories. It is now however too late to fix the broken relationship it had turned into and all you dream of is to go back in time and experience those memories again in order to fully understand what went wrong and wonder if it was ever possible to change the outcome of this once special bond.
"To My Dear Sarah" is an interactive narrative game set in Virtual Reality telling the story of Sarah who journeys through her past after losing her grandfather. She shared the fondest memories with him when she was a child. Her most precious memory of him was when he would teach her to play the piano. Sarah's grandfather composed for his granddaughter a song which he named "To My Dear Sarah". When Sarah became a teenager, she started to become distant and her grandfather was never able to approach her as he did before. When she became an adult, the roles reversed and her grandfather became distant and uninterested, a symptom of old age. He then passes away without Sarah ever reconciling with him, which breaks her spirit and fills her with guilt. Sarah then takes this journey to the past in order to understand what went wrong and how things could have been fixed.
The starting scene of the game is a memory of Sarah as a child and her gradfather playing the piano. In each scene is a distant memory and there are scattered memo objects within the scene which you can pick up and then you are transported into a different memory. As you progress in the game and jump through time and memories you will discover how Sarah changed as a teenager and became less caring and attentive to her grandfather and as a consequence when she turned into an adult, it was her grandfather who became distant. There is a lesson to be learned from this short game on the importance of keeping your loved ones close and cherishing every moment with them.
This project was part of my senior final project and was exhibited in Dubai Design District for the 6 Degrees exhibition. It was presented in VR format and many visitors tried playing my game with the Occulus Headset. 3D modeling and texturing was made in Blender. Game engine used was Unity 3D.
Concept and Story - Lana Razak
Character Concept Art - Lana Razak
Environment Setup - Lana Razak
3D Modeling, Texturing and Animation - Lana Razak
Development and Programming - Lana Razak
VR Development and Set up - Lana Razak
"To My Dear Sarah" Song Composer - Majed Al Shamsi
Professor overseeing the project - Zlatan Filipovic
Trailer
Short trailer of the game
Character Concept Art
Sarah
Grandfather
Character 3D Model
Sarah
Grandfather
Scenes in 3D
These scenes were rendered in Blender, as a test before importing to Unity.
Download Link
Feel free to download the game and check it out for free!
Documentation
The VR game was set up and exhibited twice. Once for the TAKE406 Exhibition in the College of Architecture, Art and Design in the American University of Sharjah and the second time was for the "6 Degrees" Exhibition in Dubai Design District. These images and videos show how visitors have enjoyed the experience.
Conclusion
This was my first full video game production and so it was a huge learning curve and I learned a lot along the way. I do not have any technical programming experience so I took a course at NYUAD to learn basic programming in Unity, and that is what helped me develop my game. Doing everything from start to finish gave me a big insight on art direction and game development. Now, 6 years later, I can see now what could be fixed and improved. It was a fun experience and I am glad that people at the exhibitions seemed to enjoy it. This is a step to creating my next big game.