Promotional Video

Mission

Blood donation numbers in Japan have critically decreased due to the quarantine protocols to prevent further spread of the covid-19 virus. The medical field and staff all around the world have already been going through an extreme crisis and despite the overwork, doctors must resume standard operations and checkups as there are still patients carrying cancer, pneumonia, and countless other diseases other than covid. Blood donations are necessary for doctors to execute surgical operations and by simply donating some healthy blood, we as citizens could show a strong form of appreciation towards all medical staff risking their lives to protect us everyday.

The objective of this project is to raise social awareness of blood donation in Japan towards children/teenagers/young adults (8-25), as younger donors are preferred in terms of blood quality. The game will be aimed to introduce and educate the crisis of the medical field and feel excited about becoming a donor to help them out.

Choice of Medium

Video games are an underappreciated field in terms of educational purposes, as it distills hard concepts into a simpler form and allows fluid translation of knowledge by gamifying the process of learning.

Since teengagers have been our clear target audience due to them holding the purest forms of blood for donation purposes, our solution to this problem of utilizing video games seemed appropriate as a communication tool for users to first hand experience a medical crisis, whilst implementing a touching narrative to draw users to become blood donors.

The video game will then be promoted through the help of streamers on the platform “Twitch.tv”, where young streamers will demonstrate and promote the content created for a wider spread of demographic.

Storyline

Mina is a 4 year old girl diagnosed with leukemia. She has spent over half of her life in the hospital because of her fragile body and prays that one day she could fly around the sky and become free from the hospital. Yet the cancer surgery to keep her alive requires 10 pints of blood of blood type O- blood and due to the covid situation, there aren’t enough donors to supply her enough blood. She is told that there is around 1 week of her life left, which puts Mina in despair. Meanwhile, Kevin the mosquito, who was looking around for blood to suck on, witnesses this situation and vows that he will collect the 10 pints of blood within his lifespan of 7 days, which is also the lifespan of Mina at the moment. Kevin pursues in stealing blood from pedestrians with blood type O-

(he is able to sniff out the blood types due to his nature of a mosquito) who seem to live an ordinary, luxurious lifestyle, and ends up collecting all 10 pints with countless rounds of going back and forth between the hospital and the city. Kevin on his journey to collecting the blood meets a pack of new friends that are willing to help him with his mission, which results in a small pack of mosquitoes working together to save a small girl. Nonetheless, after the mission is completed, Kevin and his friends’ lifespans are also at it’s limit, resulting in the death of all the mosquitoes. As a result however, Mina’s body is completely cured due to the amazing quality of the blood and the hard efforts of mosquitoes.

On your journey you will run into talented, dependable mosquito friends all holding unique personalities and abilities to help you collect the blood in time.

Within the society of mosquitoes, exists various mosquito villagers to guide you through stages and navigate events. Some live within rooms that are curated and designed to match their personalities.

Narrative Scenes

Storytelling and narrative is the bread and butter of this video game, allowing players to experience the world first hand of what it feels like to be a part of a society of mosquitoes. Each narrative frame will contain small gif animations and music to enhance the experience. All 4 stage will open up with narrative scenes, allowing players to get introduced to the niches of each stage as well as meet a new mosquito friend.

All narrative scenes were hand drawn and built on a 500 x 300 canvas using the pencil tool on photoshop. Scene from opening narrative.

Stage Concept

Every stage in The Giver has conceptually been tailored to appreciate the mundane, everyday scenery such as cities, parks and schools, aiming to depict a realistic lens of the world through a mosquito’s eye. Phones, coke cans, watches; the perception of scale is drastically skewed and everything just feels gigantic from a tiny mosquito’s eye.

Additionally, mosquitoes are generally at the bottom of the food chain due to its tiny physicality. Any small specie like cockroaches and dragonflies turn into enormous predators, making you vulnerable and always on your toes as almost everything alive on this planet feels like a threat. The ecosystem compared to the humans are designed to hold a much more stylized look, creating a secondary perspective and world from a mosquito’s eye.

Enemies

All humans are designed at high dense pixel art (300x700) to 1. show aspects of realism 2. compensate for the large scale in gameplay, as they are much bigger than most other sprites. The complexity of the pixel density should work harmoniously with other pixel sizes

Ecosystem

Mosquitoes are generally at the bottom of the food chain due to its tiny physicality. Any small specie like cockroaches and dragonflies turn into enormous predators, making you vulnerable and always on your toes as almost everything alive on this planet feels like a threat.

Gameplay

1. Approaching Phase

Each stage holds 2 different phases of gameplay. The first phase is called the "Approaching Stage”. The player objective is to travel through a maze constructed through trees, pipes and gym machines in the fastest possible time to reach the O- blood holder’s neck. On the way, there will be numerous humans and species that will try to prevent your way.

The gameplay and mechanics of this section are influenced by retro arcade-style video games such as “Donkey Kong Country” and “Owl Boy”. It holds a unique 2D side scrolling gameplay yet the player is able to fly, which adds a component to the 2D platformer.

2. Slapping Phase

The second phase of each stage starts when the player reaches the neck of the O- blood holding human. The objective of this section is to collect the required blood amount before the countdown timer hits 0. Humans will try to prevent you from taking blood by slapping and players must react and learn certain eye behavior patterns that can be monitored from the indicator window on the top right. This part of gameplay only requires one key binding that allows players to jump off and go back to sucking, making the gameplay solely dependent on reaction speed and pattern recognization,

Pixel Style Guidelines

Producer/Director

Kento Shirotsuka

Lead Programmer

Fernando Deadknot

Skeleton and Concept Development

Gabriel Koba

Sound Engineering and Music Production

Gage Winthrop

Animation

Leo Stafsnes