Visual Novel Ideas – Jessica Tumarkin

#1: Mannekijn

Your name is Andrea (Andie for short) and you are a Mannequin in a medium-sized mall in middle America. You are bored and unhappy with your life as a Victoria’s Secret underwear model, so you decide to quit your job one night and look for another modeling gig that suits you more. You are a feminist, highly independent, and somewhat disgusted by how some of the other mannequins are happy to be objectified. The choices you make will revolve around talking to other mannequins.

One of the mannequins that you talk to, Kelly, is an Old Navy model who has to be perpetually cheery and smiley. As you befriend her and learn more about her job in the hopes of finding one for yourself, you can find out more about her life and dig deeper into her true thoughts about the job. She’s exhausted ofhaving to put on a front each and every day for customers that don’t appreciate the hard work that she does. She’s deeply
unhappy with herself for settling for this mediocre mannequin job, and wants change.

The main part of the game will have you explore the mall and talk to mannequins across different stores. Choices will focus around either befriending the other mannequins or acting agressively towards them, which will in turn either reveal more dialogue about the other character or cause them to behave agressively back to you/silently fume at you/etc.  I want some dialogue to happen about issues such as body image, the portrayal of women in media, etc.

Kelly has a smile frozen on her face so her expressions are shown solely through her eyes and eyebrows

#2: Who Wants to be a Pop Idol

You play a nameless character who wants to break into the Korean pop music industry. The art style of the game will be simplified and cutesy, but the tone of the game will offer a dark contrast to this. You find out about the hardships of training to be a so-called “idol”, including living off of meager funds, facing competition and hostility from other trainees, and being under pressure to lose weight.

Your character is an introverted, thoughtful guy (INFP). You’ve always had dreams of being a singer, and you barely finished high school with passing grades due to the fact that you were spending most of your free time taking vocal lessons and recording songs. Your self-confidence is very lacking from having to compete with so many other talented singers. As you interact with other characters, you encounter hostility and agression no matter what you do. This is a cut-throat industry, and characters which may seem friendly at first will later turn around and stab you in the back. Your manager belittles you, other trainees dislike you, and as an awkward introvert who struggles with social interaction, the choices you make will center around your struggle to ‘say the right thing’ to the people you talk to to make it further in the industry.

Hello! I'm currently a Junior CS Major hoping to minor in Game Development. My favorite games are Earthbound and Catherine.
5 comments
  1. both of them are very thoughtful ideas and i think both would turn out well. in regards to this project however, i think the first one might be better as the second will involve a lot of narrative to establish the character. But in the first, you can just begin the story

  2. The first one has a lot of promise but will depend on execution. You should look for things that are specific to mannequins and not just general comments about society.

  3. I think both are interesting but I would choose the mannequin one. I also think that this is out of scope since you have to talk to multiple characters. I believe the assignment only requires you to talk to one character. I think you could get into some interesting topics about society.

  4. I’m a fan of the second one due to the diversity of characters you encounter, however that could take away from the experience making all other characters too shallow if you’re not careful.

  5. The Mannekjin game has a good sense of adventure and a lot of potential for character development. It also seems like it could be socially relevant if you allow it to be.
    The KPop one seems to have a very large scale (multiple characters, large sense of progress over time, lots of development/change), and I wonder if it can be done effectively for our time frame? There’s a lot of detail in their character’s life, and I don’t know if all of it would show through. I feel as though the player wouldn’t have a lot of options since you’ve already made the character’s outlook/features so defined.

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