Goal:
Learn Python and ASCII art styling to create an engaging game
Solution:
Learn about the Scottish Highlands and create a medieval adventure game
Impact:
A new-found interest in coding and game design through Python
Take your sword and free its soul… if you can defeat March Casgan, that is.
Sword-Bound Soul, March is a text-based adventure through the Scottish highlands on a quest to save a soul that has been trapped inside a magical sword. Choose your character and get ready for battle!
Creation
Soul-Bound Sword, March, was born from a 10-week python course taught by Akira Wong and Andrew Rothman
Through this game, I learned low-level python skills, high-level python skills, ASCII art creation, and and continued my learning far after this course!
I also dove deep into lore about Scotland! I tried to make it as accurate as possible.
Below are my design elements and inspirations:
This is a shot from the movie Trainspotting — a great movie that takes place in Scotland! I also have a lot of Scottish heritage so I used family photos as well.
Above is a Scottish Translator. Although they still speak English, there are important dialectic differences, including many fascinating turns of phrase! I wanted to incorporate many of these without creating a stereotype.
Above is the ASCII Art Archive. It is a critical resource for preservation of this art style as well as an open-source fount of ASCII artifacts. I used many of these assets throughout the game and even created some of my own.
When prototyping my design ideas,
I really enjoyed creating this game because I got to combine my love of writing, my love of flowers, and my love of creation!
The whimsy that Adventure Time works into each 11-minute episode was always so inspiring to me. I wanted to make my game just as engaging and effervescent.
The Geronimo Stilton book series encouraged young readers to feel excitement with each word on the page. The constantly changing weights, typefaces, colors, and forms the writing takes shows readers that words can be playful and fun.
Before truly starting the game, you must do my favorite part of the game: Cow Milking!
I want sustainability to be exciting!
The many-splendored world of sustainability!
Card Designs
This is why Interdependence is extremely colorful and full of surprises.
The goal of Interdependence is to complete sustainability goals. You do this by obtaining a Social, Economic, and Environmental sustainability card.
But watch out for bad Events! Just like in the real world, unexpected surprises can make achieving sustainability much harder. To make life easier, you can get a sustainable job in this game! Be a teacher, an urban planner, an architect, or many more jobs that make a greener planet.
Sustainability can be colorful!
The coolest part about this game is that it’s also educational!
After a game of Interdependence, players may wonder why they should even care about sustainability.
Fear not! The back of the instruction sheet details many reasons why it it important.
Furthermore, it enumerates ways that a player of any age can get involved in the sustainability movement!
The full instruction sheet can be found below.
Game collectors beware! There’s only 1 copy out there!
I fit all the cards into specific sections in the box. The point tokens were placed in a small bag in the top right of the box and the instruction sheet sits on top.
If you are interested in your own copy of Interdependence, sorry! This one’s not for sale.
JUST KIDDING! If you want to try this game out, please down load both the instruction sheet above as well as the full card sheet in the button below. Happy playing!
The world’s first unboxing video of Interdependence!
Alastair Merrett 