Beyond The Marion is a time loop space game from Placebo Entertainment developed by myself and fellow Bradley students in the Summer of 2024. We formed Placebo Ent. in the hopes of keeping our skills sharp over the summer and to create a game in the 3 months or so before the start of our Senior year.
I was a part of Placebo during the summer of 2024, before my Senior year. I balanced this project with my 40 hour a week Caterpillar internship at the same time over that summer, working at my internship at CAT in the day, and Placebo at night.
By the end of the project, the goal was to publish it on sites like Steam and Itch, as well as gain experience in marketing a game project. However, no matter if this project succeeded or blew up in our faces, the real goal was for people to try something new with game development, bolster skills, gain new experiences, and to just have fun developing a game with friends over the summer! Now that’s a message I can get behind.
On the project, I wore a lot of different hats. As part of our goal to try new things in game design outside of class; I expanded my horizons and took on new challenges! I was the group's lead UI designer, a creative writer, video editor, and a game designer.
This was an exclusive group, formed by two Bradley students , only allowing those qualified for the job to participate, as well as making it exclusive for rising Juniors and Seniors. To ensure no bias and high-quality work, our founders conducted an application process with an interview.
Excited to work on a project with my friends before Capstone, as well as to bolster my game development experience, I applied for the job!
The first day of the project we met up to set the expectations as well as decide on what we wanted to make. It was made clear that because of most people’s summer internships, as well as just pre-established summer plans, that people would be expected to work at night from 6pm to 10pm, with meetings on Fridays. This worked out great for me with my internship’s schedule, as it meant I could reasonably balance both responsibilities while still finding time to remain healthy and active during my free time.
Then came the discussion of the game itself. What should it be? Was there a premise anyone wanted? How about gameplay mechanics or a story? This discussion went on for hours, with sketches made, and proposals pitched.
However, after some debating and discussion, we settled on an idea: a time loop-based game, set on a spaceship, with a colorful cast of alien characters. It really got people excited and satisfied with what everyone wanted out of the project. Artists got to make fun aliens and wacky ship designs. Programmers got to figure out a time looking mechanic and how that would impact the flow of the game. Designers got to think of how the game will use the loop mechanic and come up with ideas of the game. We were all pumped!
As part of our goal of trying new things, I was placed on the design team. I had never been on the formal design team before, always just being the UI designer or artist, so this was a change of pace for me. That can especially be said with my first task.
Because of our premise, we needed to have a documented list of potential characters to occupy our game, including descriptions, backstory, and personalities. No one available on our team had history with creative writing, including myself. On a whim, I threw my hat into the ring and decided to give creative writing a shot. I gave myself one week until our next meeting to get the initial drafts completed
When it came to designing the cast of aliens, my thought process was often thought of in two ways: What is an interesting archetype to use for an alien? And what is an interesting planet that this alien would inhabit? To me, it felt like using logical deduction more than anything to determine who these aliens were, what kind of society they would live in, and how they interact with their world.
By the end of my brainstorming, I found that I had a robust and detailed backstory for each character and the world they came from. It was super fun getting to go through this world building process and coming up with unique ideas for each character based off of just would make sense. Seems so simple when I think about it in that way. As a result, by the end of the week, I had created a list of 10 different characters to build upon. My team loved it! Immediately, people were getting excited over the possibilities each character brought to the table, both story-wise as well as gameplay.
Speaking of gameplay, that was the next piece of the puzzle on the docket to figure out. Throughout the entire project’s lifetime, the design team would meet regularly 1 to 2 times a week for hours to discuss the developing changes to the game. We would discuss everything from level design, to characters, to gameplay mechanics, to cuts. Anytime something new needed to be figured out for the game, it was up to us to find a solution.
It was during these design meetings that we decided that the main gameplay loop of the game would be a minigame collection, where the player runs around the ship, attempting to help each NPC with a quest or minigame to save them, all while trying to progress through an ever ticking down timer sending them to the start of the loop. The player would gain information, learn routes, find new items, and explore further with each loop as they slowly progress.
Meanwhile, while I was a part of the design team, I also served as the game’s UI lead. The UI/UX team consisted of around 4 people, with 2 designers and 2 developers. While I was handling the design of the game itself, two other teammates designed and developed the website for Placebo.
We primarily worked in Figma, where one would prep screens for the site, while I worked on in-game screens like the pause and main menu. Together we reviewed each other's work, developed our mood board and design system and oversaw implementation. Despite having the title of “UI/UX Lead”, I wanted to make sure that my fellow designer had equal say in all matters. I don’t really care about the title itself and I know that she is a fantastic designer, so it was imperative to me that she knew her work and say in matters was valued.
Throughout the span of the project, I utilized Figma to gray boxed screens, developed high quality mockups of the main menu and pause menu, made components, and organized the design system. I made sure to keep in contact with my developer throughout the various stages as well to keep everyone on the same page of development.
It was around the midpoint of development where my next challenge was presented to me. As the team’s creative writer that developed the characters, I was then tasked with developing the lore doc for the game. It was time to write the history of the world the game takes place in, as well as the game’s story, intro, and endings.
For the premise of the game’s world, I wanted something imposing that would create a reason why the player and the crew were properly isolated from receiving outside help. After playing with many ideas, I eventually fell in love with the idea of leaving reality itself. Pulling from my knowledge of classic cosmic horrors and stories like Interstellar, I came up with the idea of a barrier at the very edge of reality. Everything within the barrier is what we know; it is what we call reality. But what if you could go beyond it? Outside of known existence. Better yet, what if you were being called outside of reality? What kind of being, or anything from that matter, is sending out a signal from beyond known reality?
Instantly, I fell in love with this concept and all the possibilities for a story it could hold. Almost immediately, I began fleshing out the world and history that a concept like this could lend itself to. I began thinking about motives for why the character I had made would be in this scenario, and how these two aspects of the story could be brought together. It felt like planning a DnD campaign.
With some help from my fellow designers and teammates, we fleshed out the idea to its final form, coming up with the exact information to present the play in the intro, the dialogue character would speak, and how the endings could conclude. Using the classic wooden engraving, The Flammarion Engraving, which depicts a man peering outside of reality, we dub the name of the border of reality, The Marion. And with that, our space game had a title, Beyond The Marion. By the end of the lore doc, we had created an interesting and vast history for the world and characters with our story.
“You are an elite team of 6 astronauts, explorers, and professionals chosen across various planets to man [a] vessel on the first expedition beyond The Marion in over 7,000 years. Your mission is to go beyond The Marion and find the source of the signal. After stopping at a nearby space station to pick up the engineer of your crew, The Polaris MK 0, makes its descent through the hole of The Marion. As the crew’s eyes are bathed in light, you cross the threshold Only to find yourself caught, stuck in the gap of The Marion, between what is and what is not, split between reality and what lies beyond.”
Meanwhile, while I was working on the design of the game and its lore, my teammate was placed on the art team as a 2D artist. As part of the game’s design, we decided to have an intro and two ending videos within the game as a way to introduce the player and end the game.
We collaborated well as a team. I would draw the storyboards for the videos, describing what was happening in the scene, what dialogue was being played, the tone of the scene, and any other necessary details, with a sketch of the idea I had for the art of the scene. When complete, I would send to my teammate the storyboard, where she would then take my sketches and turn them into beautiful art pieces.
Once all the pieces were made, I took all of the assets into Adobe Premiere and strung them together with animations to make all of the videos in the game. There were multiple rounds of feedback, editing pacing, transitions, animations, and last-minute dialogue changes. However, by the end of the feedback and rounds of editing, the videos were complete! I exported them and sent them off to our sound designer!
Once the videos were completed, it was my turn to assist the asset team. In playtesting, we found that many players felt lost with how to use the minigames. They didn’t understand the controls or how the minigames properly functioned; as a result, players kept failing to progress.
We needed some form of tutorial. Unfortunately, because of our limited team, dev time and uniqueness of each minigame, we didn’t have the resources to make proper tutorials. But I had an idea. I was reminded by the game, Control, and how that game uses whiteboards in the environment to clue players into puzzles. I figured that if we can’t have proper tutorials, perhaps we could create whiteboard assets that could help explain to the player how to play the minigame. These whiteboards could be scattered around the environment next to the minigames and could catch the player’s eye to help them progress.
With the help of my fellow designers, I drew these whiteboard assets in Photoshop. I had the two of them explain to me how the minigames worked so that I could get a better understanding of their mechanics, and how I could then depict those with visuals.
The process was trial and error, with constant communication and feedback from asset and design teams being a massive help on improving their readability. In the end, it was absolutely worth the work. Once the art was done and implemented, we found in playtesting that player understanding of the minigames went up significantly, with many players saying that they were a massive help.
Finally, after implementation of all UI, our final date of Gold Master Build is upon us. As I am writing this, the project and summer 2024 are reaching its conclusion; this has been a fantastic experience to have been a part of. Not only was it great being able to work with some of my closest friends in our final year of college, but it has given me the opportunity to experiment with a myriad of new things in a short amount of time. I got to take a crack at designing, make my own little fictional world filled with cool characters, practice video editing, and utilize my Figma skills. No matter how this project will shape out in the end, success or failure, I have loved it through and through. What a great way to spend my summer!
