“3 People. 2 Outcomes. 1 Man and his Taxi.”
Hank has been driving the Don and his outfit around Chicago for decades.
Tensions reach a boiling point as the Don invites his wife and his mistress to his club on the same night.
Determine how the evening unfolds in Taxi Noir!
Download Taxi noir
Tensions reach a boiling point as the Don invites his wife and his mistress to his club on the same night.
Determine how the evening unfolds in Taxi Noir!
Download Taxi noir
Credits
Game Design: Jolyne Aluko
Animation: Shey Bala & Kaeden Green
Character Design: Kaeden Green
UI/UX Design: Shey Bala
Narrative Design: Meg Donohoe & Jolyne Aluko
Animation: Shey Bala & Kaeden Green
Character Design: Kaeden Green
UI/UX Design: Shey Bala
Narrative Design: Meg Donohoe & Jolyne Aluko
Development Process
The Initial Idea
The team was inspired by the classic noir era style of media, those specifically set in Chicago. From Chicago we drifted towards the traditional mob based storyline to give us interesting characters to work with. To avoid being stereotypical we decided to make our main character someone who works with them so that we could introduce a complicated dynamic to the player from an outsider perspective.
The team was inspired by the classic noir era style of media, those specifically set in Chicago. From Chicago we drifted towards the traditional mob based storyline to give us interesting characters to work with. To avoid being stereotypical we decided to make our main character someone who works with them so that we could introduce a complicated dynamic to the player from an outsider perspective.
Immersive Gameplay
A visual novel offers little in terms of tactile gameplay to hook the player and keep them playing. As a designer my challenge was to create a visual novel that was interesting enough early on to keep players hooked into the world we built narratively.
I wanted to grasp people with little things like a soundtrack that matched the characters identities,a working car horn, the text box being shaped like a torn receipt. We wanted the space outside of the text box to be just as important the text within.
A visual novel offers little in terms of tactile gameplay to hook the player and keep them playing. As a designer my challenge was to create a visual novel that was interesting enough early on to keep players hooked into the world we built narratively.
I wanted to grasp people with little things like a soundtrack that matched the characters identities,a working car horn, the text box being shaped like a torn receipt. We wanted the space outside of the text box to be just as important the text within.
Programming
The Little Things
Working with our lead narrative designer, we were able to draft a set of songs that best fit each character conversation and I was able to place them into a playable radio using scriptable objects.
The player is able to cycle through the songs seamlessly from 0-7, each song holds an index number and is held in a different “Station” so when the player swaps songs they hear a static transition audio to simulate the idea of finding a new station while on the road.
Working with our lead narrative designer, we were able to draft a set of songs that best fit each character conversation and I was able to place them into a playable radio using scriptable objects.
The player is able to cycle through the songs seamlessly from 0-7, each song holds an index number and is held in a different “Station” so when the player swaps songs they hear a static transition audio to simulate the idea of finding a new station while on the road.
Inkle Integration
It was my first time working with INKY and integrating it into Unity. I wanted the text confined to the vertical box off to the side as opposed to the traditional horizontal text box at the bottom of the screen and invoke the feeling of reading a printed receipt.
The main focus was being able to keep the text history visible while being able to scroll back up and reference it for answers to questions or to re-read after gaining new context. I was able to rely on an upperclassman who worked on a project with a similar system and built it around tags to display names above speech. I used a dialogue box prefab and and programmed the text to be spawned at the bottom of the box and push all previous text upward while resetting the lowest point of the dialogue box so the text stays in place.
It was my first time working with INKY and integrating it into Unity. I wanted the text confined to the vertical box off to the side as opposed to the traditional horizontal text box at the bottom of the screen and invoke the feeling of reading a printed receipt.
The main focus was being able to keep the text history visible while being able to scroll back up and reference it for answers to questions or to re-read after gaining new context. I was able to rely on an upperclassman who worked on a project with a similar system and built it around tags to display names above speech. I used a dialogue box prefab and and programmed the text to be spawned at the bottom of the box and push all previous text upward while resetting the lowest point of the dialogue box so the text stays in place.
Dialouge prefab
Code to reset disalouge layout position
Concept Art
Credit to Shey Bala and Kaeden Green