"The Library" Pitch Presentation

Editor's Notes

1. Hello there! My name is Alex Clark, and I’m here to talk to you about “The Library” which is a concept I have developed to raise awareness for the current gender imbalance in the UK games industry.
2. I will start with a brief overview of the game. Players take control of Snow, a white owl that works at the library, which is a magical building that houses all the worlds futures and all the worlds pasts. For reasons that are never fully explained to the player, Snow can’t leave the library and every day Talon gives players missions to do in certain sections of the Library. Wren is Snow’s childhood friend who started working at the library at the same time as Snow, and is allowed outside the library at any point and spends most of the game outside. However player’s can never follow suit.
3. The game itself takes place over a number of days. The first mission is the only mission players do with Wren by their side. This mission serves as a tutorial as well as getting players used to the environment they will be exploring. Past that however, Wren will go outside each day to do missions whereas players will stay inside the library. Players will be able to unlock new skills, gain Librarian Ranks and open new areas of the Library to explore. But they will always be trapped within the confines of the building. At the end of each day, Wren will come back and talk to Snow about what happened outside the library, and then they’ll ask the player if they want to go outside with them the next day. However, the option for Yes will be greyed out with the caption “Librarian Rank too low”. This represents how close players are to breaking through but can never quite get there, since not even the highest attainable rank in the game is enough to make this option selectable. As a players Librarian Rank increases, they learn new flying skills that help them gather books faster and in more impressive ways. However, when using these skills in front of another owl in the library then the game stops, zooms in to the owl that has spotted them and players are scolded for potentially damaging the books in the library. The number of bookmarks a player receives at the end of the day also decreases depending on how many times a player is seen using these skills, which slows players down in terms of achieving the next rank.
4. The design of the library is based on a combination of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the London Library and a Rotastack Hamster Cage. It’s wide at the bottom leading up to a single point to represent how opportunities for women to expand dwindle the higher they get, eventually hitting the metaphorical Glass Ceiling that they can’t move forward from. I chose to use a hamster cage as reference because as a child I always loved how they looked and imagined running around all the tubes and different chambers. I wanted to bring that enjoyment to players, but keep within the constraints that despite how interesting it is, it’s still a cage. Despite having all the knowledge of the worlds futures and pasts, players are still restricted to the library.
5. The artstyle I have been thinking about for this game is a very cell shaded style, similar to the latest Pokemon Games and Dragon Quest 10. I want the artstyle to be bright and peaceful so that players have the confidence to explore all the sections of the library without the fear of any hostile threats.