★ Protagonists - Anwyn and Archer, 8 year old twins. ★

★ The design of Invitation to Star Resort intends to retell the childhood memories held by its creator, Anwyn Westgarth, blending themes of nostalgia and isolation. 

It was important to us that the player always understood what they were meant to do. To achieve this, we created a linear storyline and ensured the player was guided along the right path with Archer acting as a tool for information, hints, progression, and emotional support for his twin sister. We wanted to create small, heartwarming moments between the pair. These moments can be discovered by interacting with objects within the hotel rooms, or maybe taking a look out from the balcony. The small lines of flavour text were thought about carefully to convey the characters personalities and how they perceive the environment around them.

The twins Anwyn and Archer are designed with personal touches, inspired by the real-life appearances of the people they represent, featuring a baseball-stitched sweater and moles on their faces in the same places as their counterparts. 

The choice to have child protagonists allowed us to play with perspective, reality, and emotions, making the hotel feel large and impactful. Using a paper cut out and cutesy style for the twins symbolizes the innocence of children venturing into an unfamiliar world, a juxtaposition to the surrounding artwork, conveying how innocence can feel out of place in a more complex setting. 

Music and sound design were equally important elements to us. The tracks within the menu and first scene carry a sense of wonder and curiosity with the opening theme being more bright, layered with twinkling sounds of stars. As you move deeper into the resort tracks become more atmospheric and heavy, growing more serene yet unsettling with every scene.

★ To reflect, when we first started with GML, many of us were new to the platform, as were many in the class. Knowing what we know now, we would approach things differently. The most important lessons we learned were the value of collaboration and the need for balanced workload distribution. Certain tasks became too heavy for some teammates, which prevented them from doing their best work under pressure and led to burnout and rushed decisions. Secondly, we learned the underestimated importance of scaling. Constantly resizing items is time-consuming, and while it was challenging with multiple artists, properly scaling from the start would have saved a significant amount of time. The effort spent creating scaling workarounds could have been better used to develop more critical parts of the game. However, because so many of us come from a more arts focused background, it allowed us to put full force towards creating the desired visuals for our game, something that would not have been possible without. Though taking that skill and translating it to be optimal for gameplay was more challenging than expected. Drawing a background illustration was one thing when it was just meant to be looked at, but now as a navigable map with depth and interactive elements, it suddenly took a lot more brain power. 

That being said, the last two months were an incredibly impactful learning experience that we feel proud of, especially for rookies. We pushed ourselves outside of our creative comfort zones. We are very satisfied with the visuals and soundscape of our game. Though we did have to scope down and things naturally carry a bit of jankiness, as expected in a short time period, things came out with more polish than anticipated. Many team members expressed interest in continuing development as a personal indie project after the semester is over, something the team leader is equally interested in. It is great to have a team to pick up where you fall weak and learn new perspectives and skills from. It is an experience and project we won’t forget, and hope that the playable experience is as fun as it was for us to create.

★ This final build features a realized resort for you to explore, quick time events and puzzles, and beautiful music to enjoy.

★ Please refer to the walkthrough video link to observe our final build. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Uj6uBfms8Vyi7CRRZubOP4493gZ5PIFd/view?usp=shari...