On Mignonette is an exploration of game mechanics and moral emotions. After a terrible storm, the crew of The Mignonette found themselves ona lifeboat with only a pitifully small amount of supplies. The desperatesituation prompted a possible solution: make one of the crew membersfood for the others. What would they do in the face of this dilemma?Who would suggest such a thing? How would they decide who should besacrificed? This work is based on a true story.
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The original goal of this research is to explore how can a game arouse moral emotions among players with less scripted contents. And this work basically reaches the goal. As we can see, the interface is rather simple, so it forces the players to focus on the mechanics. During the playing, the players will get to know each character better gradually, find out how easy or difficult it is to kill them, and experience different endings according to their choice. Moral emotions in games are aroused by mechanics with scripted contents added, and except those moral emotions that can be evoked by the narrative part alone, mechanics should also have a unique role in the process of evoking moral emotions in games. This project is investigating the principles and quantities of how scripted content should be added on game mechanics in order to arouse moral emotions.
The game is built on the concept of cannibalism in the extreme situation and the moral dilemma contained in such situations, and based on a real case happened in 19th century. It is designed with a rich economic system, and art assets in minimalized design, in order to reach the goal of testing how players can be aroused by game mechanics. This project also contains an introduction video made by stop motion animation, to avoid the players being too less informed, I also made a stop motion animation as an introduction or trailor, and is displayed separately.
The game flow is short, but there are many possibilities and different endings, which are supposed to attract players to repeat playing and exploring the game. In this process, players will get to know the mechanics better, and are also invited to add scripted contents to the game spontaneously with their imagination based on their own experience. With the brutal or hopeless ending are gradually shown to the players, the goal of arousing moral emotions could be reached. This project not only tries to provide a fun and think-requiring playing experience, but also willing to arouse deeper feelings and reflections to its audience.
Tags:#Mechanics#MoralEmotion