School Projects

Step into the shoes of a young girl from the grassroots and experience her perilous journey towards achieving education.

Set in a far-flung community in the Philippines, you step into the shoes of a young girl and experience her perilous journey towards achieving education. Immerse in a remote countryside surrounded by natural landscapes and indigenous Filipino culture. Meet countryfolk, pass dangerous paths, and swim through water to make your way to school.

This CAPSTONE project introduced us to the untapped potentials of Virtual Reality (VR) and ludo-narrative intersections at the time we were in college. Harnessing this power brought out interesting features and concepts that fits the narrative that we wanted to showcase.

• Virtual reality
• Explore nature, climb slopes, wade and swim through water, and pass a crumbling bridge!
• Gameplay & mechanics inspired by real-life scenarios of how kids in far-flung communities go to school
• Game environment & atmosphere resembling the Philippine provincial setting
• Filipino audio language — (English option coming soon!)

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I've written a couple of blog posts about The Yellow Boat Reimagined's design and progression. [TYBR] Map Prototypes lays out my pitches for the game with the use of Auto CAD and [TYBR] Gameplay Flow BTS shows the top down map view, flowchart and progression chart of the game.

There were some interesting pitches I've made like the River Pulley section which showcases the use of Salay which is a pulley constructed across like a bridge to let people cross the bridge like a cable car. Then it turns into a tragic event where it breaks and forces them to swim for their life. I believe that this reflects the realities and dangers that is ever present in the lives of these children.

There's also the Cliff River section that affords multiple paths with varying degrees of challenge. It was ambitious and might be too much for a game story with a child as a protagonist. But the dialed down version of what we have in the game provides good enough of an execution that doesn't deter too much to the logic of the story and the world.

Overall, it was an incredibly fulfilling experience of learning new tools like Auto CAD and using it to map out top down view of locations and learning new things like how to visualize and organize the progression of the game. This later on I learned is what rationalizing game design is all about which I first discovered through Chris McEntee's article on Rational Design: The Core of Rayman Origins.

Though not a lot of my pitches got into the final game, the work and effort that the team put into this game really shines. I still got to map out the levels in a new tool that I learned and I managed to showcase a progression map that made sense for the game and readable for the my co-developers.

The Yellow Boat Reimagined (originally The Yellow Boat) was created as a Capstone project for De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde in the Philippines. It has garnered several awards from the local gaming scene suc h as: Best VR Game, Best Game Narrative and Story (Game On 2019), and Game of the Year (Game On 2018).