This game is an interactive experience in which users are able to make choices for the main character, Marjani, as she embarks on adventures with her newfound alien friend Lucianna. You are in charge of helping Marjani make important and exciting decisions to help her navigate the ups and downs of Earth and the rest of the galaxy.
The original idea for ‘Marjani and Luciana’ was actually created as part of a project I was working on with Stephanie Enriquez, another student in my Haptic Media class. We both developed and built a storyline around our characters separately. I worked on Marjani, and Stephanie worked on Luciana. Our task was to combine our character's worlds. And so was born "Marjani and Luciana".
To experience the Interactive Graphic Novel for yourself, follow this link:
https://roshniedwards.itch.io/roshnis-project
Research / Initial Design
During this project, we worked with the artist, Ryan Rose Aceae to help develop our character, give them more realistic traits, and make them more inclusive. I was also given feedback by classmates to help finetune my character.
This PDF below runs through some of my brainstorming ideas I had during the initial stages of developing my character, Marjani.
Included:
Character background & trait development
Scene and Setting development
Character Sketches
Character Motivations
Character Inspiration
Design
Further Design Steps:
This process was a little bit more complicated because for the creation of the interactive graphic novel, I had to combine my character's story line with my partner, Stephanie's, character's story.
After a lot of brainstorming, we came up with our graphic novel idea.
Basic Storyline: Marjani(she/they) is a high school student who loves art and fashion. What she wants most is to make an impact on the world through fashion and for her mother to beat cancer. Earth A146(the planet where she resides) is a clone of Earth that hasn't been contacted by Aliens for experimental purposes. Luciana(she/they), an alien girl, has managed to get in and is on the Hawaiian Islands trying to find the perfect place to start infecting the planet. As she searches, she is discovered by Marjani, and they form an unexpected bond. Help Marjani make decisions that will decide their fate, and although they don't know it yet, the fate of the universe.
The theme and message we wanted to send to players of this game was to be open to change and embrace those who might be different from you.
Through this process, we did a lot of creative worldbuilding to tie our stories together, as well as designing of each setting and interaction between the characters.
Character Sprite Examples:
Character Sprite Dialogue Example:
To follow along Marjani & Luciana's full adventure, follow this link: