Friendship shared with trust, compassion and hope is a priceless treasure rarely found. The famous quote ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’ was proven to be profound in the lives of our pets and the comfort they give us. Animation Xpress spoke to CEO Underdogs Studio Vaibhav Chavan about his views on the game.
Chavan said “We wanted to tell a compassionate story. We had read a couple of articles that mentioned how pets got abandoned by their owners during natural calamities. The thought of these pets stuck in a situation like this and giving their perspective intrigued us a lot. We didn’t focus on new titleout but on convincing the audience emotionally through a good story. It’s more of a journey than a game that gives players a feel of the situation and in fact has multiple endings”
Game developer Dilip Mavin, shares a glimpse of the struggles and loneliness a pet faces but still remains loyal. Currently, he is an employee of Underdogs and is a Unity game developer. He introduced a game called Till the Dawn, Waiting, a narrative decision based game. It is currently available on PC but is likely to be ported to Android and IOS soon. As a player of the game your decision counts as it will change the way the story proceeds.
The game is based upon the events that occurred when hurricane Irma hit the U.S. on 30 August 2017. During the time of this catastrophe many people abandoned their pets by either tying them to a pole or leaving them in pens. This act of leaving behind a pet was considered to be animal cruelty and harassment. The story revolves around the pet, that unknowingly suffers harassment as he is left outside in the middle of nowhere by his owner. The game intends the player to feel the pain and sorrow the pet feels.
The game had been developed within 48 hours and still requires more work. Plans have been put in to motion to make this a fully fledged game but no timeline has been decided yet. Mavin said that “This was one -of-a-kind experience for me personally. Though the game concept was lingering in my mind for some time now, thanks to NASSCOM NGDC, we finally got a chance to bring it out.”
The core team involved Dilip Mavin the programmer of the game and the leader of the project. The art work was done by Hayungsha Baglary. Krutika Chalke helped with the copy text and the story was designed and written by CEO Vaibhav Chavan.This game has been made for Gamejam BYOG 2017 and has been shortlisted in the top five and is also being showcased in NGDC 2017. There is currently a large fan base for players who enjoy narrative based games. The majority are PC users hence the focus is on them.
(This article has been written by Rohan Rodrigues)
