Defining the essential experience – 

I’ve talked a lot about the essential experience so far, but I’m going to explain by what I mean when I say this. The thing is, the essential experience can change depending on what the designer’s intentions are. Simply the essential experience is the core theme, emotion or message you want a player to experience. Translating this to my game ideas, for Doctor Water the essential experience I want to show is the theme of the game, water scarcity.

General plan on how to convey the essential experiences

Game Narrative – 

Doctor Water – 

The core essential experience that I wanted Doctor Water to portray is the theme of water scarcity and the effects it has on different areas. How I’m going to use narrative to portray this experience is through the protagonist controlled by the player. The game would start by exploring the backstory of the protagonist, a privileged oblivious londoner, the game starts when they are on holiday in a country affected by water scarcity and is put in a situation of having to defeat the enemies in front of them to get out, however as they defeat the enemies and progress they realise if they fix the issues with water scarcity the enemies will vanish. After the first mission the protagonist quits his job in London and sets out on a mission to fix water scarcity around the world. The climax hits when the player realises these enemies only exist due to human interference and has to overthrow these leaders to save the worlds population.

Visual Design – 

Doctor Water –

Within this game the visual design can easily be implemented to emphasise the essential experience of water scarcity by again using the colour scheme. I.e. when the player starts the level the colour scheme could be more beige and mimic a baron wasteland and as you progress and fight enemies the colour scheme changes to reddish to show the battle and once the solution happens the colour scheme becomes more blue and green to represent water and life back into the country. 

Game Puzzles –

Doctor Water –

Doctor Water would be a primarily puzzle based game with the enemies being used to keep the player constantly engaged and on edge. To keep with the essential experience of water scarcity a puzzle for the game would be on water scarcity due to poor infrastructure and the puzzle would be the player having to go through a maze to fix the leaking pipes through turning on and off water and changing the direction of the pipes in order to create a constant flow.

World Principles/ structures/ pillars

Doctor Water –

Core pillars-

• Water Scarcity 
• Puzzle Solving
• Water as a limited source for mechanics 

Core themes / mechanics 

• Water as strength 
• Resource management 
• Environmental storytelling 
• Puzzle solving  

Brief –

• Water scarcity, i want to highlight this limited source and get people to understand that we need to manage it better to keep it sustainable 
• Water as strength, water is used to destroy the enemies that block the player from being able to solve the puzzles to fix the water problems / scarcity in each level