The Game
The Hacker and the Heroine is the game that I developed with the senior game design team at University of California, Santa Cruz. The premise of the game is that the Heroine is a member of an elite group of soldiers who are dispatched on a rescue mission to retrieve the Emperor from a massive complex called the Superstructure.
When the Heroine's military unit is ambushed and decimated, leaving few survivors, the government attempts to limit public knowledge of the incident to avoid panic or uprisings in the Emperor's absence. While monitoring government information channels the Hacker hears about the failed rescue mission and learns that another rescue attempt will not be attempted. Tired of the government's disregard for human life, the Hacker manages to access the Superstructure's security system in an attempt to locate any surviving soldiers and help them escape. While searching the security cameras, he finds the panicked Heroine. She has been separated from her unit and has locked herself in a small room. He attempts to help her escape, but she is determined to complete her mission and locate the Emperor. Though he hates the Emperor, the Hacker refuses to abandon the Heroine in the massive, mutant ridden Superstructure and is determined to see her out safely. Together they will learn the truth of the Emperor's rise to world domination, the secrets behind the special soldier training facility on Mars and the truth about the origins of the part human, part machine monsters that roam the halls of the Superstructure.
Game Play
The Hacker and the Heroine is a mix of the puzzle and action genres. The game uses what we called an "indirect control." The player plays from the point of view of the Hacker looking over a map of the area the Heroine is currently located in. The Hacker (player) must hack into various computer nodes in the area to open doors and take control of turrets and other defense systems in order to destroy enemies and assist the Heroine so she can progress safely through the level. We had variations of game play where the computers that had been hacked would only stay hacked for a limited amount of time, forcing the player to manage which assets in the level they were manipulating and keep them from reverting back to the Superstructure's control. The player instructs the Heroine on where they would like her to go but she has her own AI and goes where she thinks best. Depending on conversations held between the two characters, with the player choosing which statements the Hacker will make, the Heroine will grow to trust the Hacker or to question his motives. Based on how high or low the Heroine trusts the Hacker she will take the players advice on how to progress through the levels or she will go off on whichever route she chooses. If the Heroine doesn't go according to the plan the player sets out, they will have to adjust and alter their strategy to keep her alive. If the Heroine dies, the game is over. The trust level between the Hacker and the Heroine also changes the paths the game can follow. We had planned on having five endings with two or three of the endings possibly happening earlier in the game. We wanted there to be a possibility that the interactions between the characters could lead in every possible outcome, from the Hacker convincing the Heroine to leave without the Emperor to the Heroine deciding she doesn't need the Hacker's help and going on without him. Sadly, due to time constraints we only completed the game up until the first point where the game could have ended.
I thought this game had a lot of potential. Even writing about it two and a half years after working on it I still regret that we never finished it. I also regret that we only used about twelve pages of my fifty-something page script. Oh well.
And oh yes, the images are some of the concept art from the game. They were done by the member of our team, Cliff. The Hacker and the Heroine was his baby and I had a lot of fun working with him to write the script and adapt the back story that they gave me when I joined the team.
The website for the game is: http://hnh.trappedvector.com/
