I'm a Game Designer, deeply in love with creating worlds and their cultures. In games, I aim to immerse players in the narrative through their actions.
I have experience working in C#, Unity and blueprinting in Unreal Engine. As well as in modeling and texturing.
Dika's Tarot
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Dika's Tarot is a visual novel where you will learn to read the tarot and your readings will change people's destiny. The game takes place at the end of the 19th century, travelling through different historical events and changing them depending on your answers.
In the game you'll need to guess which cards are the ones laying on the table, and how to then interpret them. This will give the client an answer about their past or future. Depending on that the client will take a decision that influence their lifes, and will have consecuences ahead in the game. Although this is not represented yet in the demo, as it only reaches the first chapter of the story.
You’ll meet famous and unknown people. Will their lives follow the path we know, or will your cards make them change it? What would the world be like if Pablo Picasso or Emile Zola had made different decisions in their lives? The project is developed in Unity.
WHAT I DID
I was the lead game designer of the game, working on the main mechanics, card system and design and interface design. The game design was done for the whole game, I show more about this further on the page.
I was also in charge of writing all the dialogues, as well as writing the story along Chema Galante. I did the starting screen UI programming and part of the cards drawing.
TEAM
Programmers: Alejandro Roca, Borja, Javi, Pablo Martínez García.
Artists: María, Shelmy, Sara, Paula, Martín, Ángel Poulain, Pablo Mata Gámez.
Designers: Pablo Mata Gámez, Chema Asensi Galante.
Writing: Pablo Mata Gámez, Chema Asensi Galante.
Production: Chema Asensi Galante, Pablo Mata Gámez.
DESIGN KEY POINTS
History and the story
Meeting the needs of a fictional story that takes place during a historical event was one of the challenges of this game. The game is a journey throughout art history at the end of the 19th century. And highlight how important art was to history itself.
From the fight against antisemitism of Émile Zola with the J'Acusse to the pioneering work and precedent of Emilia Pardo Bazán in feminism. This perspective wouldn't have been possible without the amazing Chema Galante. For the story I put an effort into creating relatable characters with their own development arch based on the player's decisions. The narrative we wanted to tell was from the refugees and emigrants of the Armenian genocide. Inspired by the wave of refugees that was arriving to Europe at that moment.
Planning system
Keeping track of all the character arches, historical events, the gameplay progression, story key points and game currency required a structured planning. Especially when each character could appear in multiple scenarios depending on the players readings. I like to work with visual distributions, this helps me and the team to understand the design. Usually I put some extra effort at the beginning of each project to set a system that clearly shows everyone what's expected and planned. This is the one I created for Dika:
Learning to read the tarot
Tarot cards are highly attractive to many people, from their visuals to their esoteric interpretations. The gameplay was design to teach the player the basics of tarot. Making the character ask questions about it and following Dika's development.
The progression of the mechanic was also planned as a way to show more complex and interesting readings. Starting with a simple yes or no reading and progressing into a more complex five cards reading.
I decided to focus on the major arcana, as those are the most iconic cards and the ones with a deeper meaning to interpret. I loved designing a deck based on the old Greek and Roman myths.
Shop mechanic
An additional mechanic that we develop was a currency system for the game. In which the player could buy items to customize their caravan. This items will also improve their capacities to do the readings, fulfilling two goals at once.
Depending in how many wrong answers they give and if they were able to finish the reding, the client would pay a certain amount. Your pay rate can also be increased by having purchased one of the shop items. Here you can read the system created for it:
