Because, Beginnings

"Because, Science" is a pointless-and-click mis-adventure game where you play a scientist who uncovers a mysterious plot in his workplace.

I can't remember when I first decided on the idea of making "Because, Science" exactly but I can roughly deduce that is was around December 2013 - January 2014 and that is the date of the first "hero.png" file. I can remember reading an article about how "Because" had been added to the dictionary as a prefix like. "Because, words", "Because, life" so I thought "Because, Science".

The original idea was a little different in that you played more of a prankster scientist, in the vein of "Peter Venkmen" from Ghostbusters, who played pranks on other scientists in the building. This proved not only incredibly difficult to implement but morally dubious at best.

I had an initial burst of coding it in 2014, but life got in the way. I had loads of teaching to do and there just wasn't any time to work on something for fun. I occasionally looked at it every couple of months everytime I taught Game Maker to my students, but there just wasn't enough time.

Here is an image uploaded on from December 21st, 2015 clearly I was on xmas holiday so I had a bit of time. It shows a super-zoomed in debugging version it had a lot of stuff working like elevators and stairs. I still have a copy of it, it is just very early stages.

Time moved on, in 2016 I started teaching Unity to my students and clearly "Because, Science" was in the back of my mind because I made "Zombie Drop" which was a basically a "Because, Science" mini-game. Where you play a scientist rescuing scientists from a zombie-experiment gone wrong. I used the Unity game to help teach my students how to use Unity to make platform games it was also nice to revisit the "Because, Science" universe.

Moving forward to December 2017 Xmas holidays again and I start to pick at "Because, Science", I also played a lot of games with my youngest son. Games like "Hello Neighbour" which was clearly inspired by "Maniac Mansion" so we play that as well and we also had a look at "Bendy and the Ink Machine".

I finally managed to complete "Maniac Mansion" after 30 years and gets me thinking about a different way to tell the story of the "Because, Science" workplace i.e. a more linear point-and-click game. I know there have been loads of point-and-click games but I had never made one so I thought it would be fun to change it up a little.

One of the first things I needed to was to decide how the inventory system worked and build it. You are a scientist so you are able to carry nine items and store the rest in your office desk and various lockers around the building. Initially, I just made a load of random icons that way I could test that they were all working, but a few of those items have stayed in so far.

So since December 2017 I have added a little bit each week, building it up slowly, there is now some semblance of a story and there are a lot of things to do in the building to uncover and unlock more of the mystery. You can now mix chemicals, transfer data and try on different outfits all of which allow you to progress through the game.

For amusement, I have included the initials and names of a lot of my games programming/ design students and friends as the nameplates in offices around the building. In some cases, I have let them choose their specialist subject area from a list of wikipedia. Some are clues and some are just nonsense but it is a nice way of including them in the game.

I have made a lot of references to science fiction films and TV like; E.T. Extraterrestrial, They Live!, 2001: A Space Odyssey and VR Troopers (yes you can change into a VR Trooper), but I have also taken a lot of things from real life. Like this.

A student of mine drew this on the whiteboard, I uploaded it to facebook years ago with the caption "Because, Memes". Subconsciously without any planning, a whiteboard with 3D text has made it into the game which helps you gain access to a computer full of memes. I didn't realise this until writing this blog and was looking for "Because, Science" images I had uploaded in the past. Clearly, it was meant to be.

The game is now considerably bigger, with multiple floors and lots of sidequests which alter the conclusion of the game and although I have no way of telling when exactly the game will be finished (it has taken a long time already) I am hoping to have a limited demo for my friends and students to play around March 2018. I estimate that despite having the idea for four years I have only worked on it for about a week.

Thanks for reading.