Mochi Men

"Mochi Men" is a digital, two player game about risk-taking, trust, communication, and making tasty tasty mochi.  

Designed alongside 3 classmates for a class on narrative design in games, I pitched the game and functioned as the creative lead on the project.  In addition I wrote it, implemented our dialogue system, designed the UI, and handled the sound design. 

In Mochi Men you play as yourself, if you were to show up at the Nakataniduo mochi shop in Japan.  With the help of a benevolent instructor, two players work in tandem to establish a rhythm of pounding rice until it reaches a suitable consistency for making this traditional Japanese dessert.  If you preform well enough, you might even get to enter the Mochi Zone™ and go on to produce the most incredible mochi your sensei has ever laid eyes on.  If you injure each other too many times though you'll be forced to stop and figure out how to get a better rhythm with your partner.  It's been compared to Dark Room Sex Game of the Copenhagen Game Collective, and while there's no love-making here (well, mochitsuki is pretty passionate), we are working on getting motion controller support in the game.

Most of the inspiration for Mochi Men came from the video below, which is of the mochi shop we based the Master and art on.  The class Mochi Men was made for revolved around narrative design, and it doesn't take much play to realize there isn't a traditional narrative here.  The town isn't being ransacked, and making mochi won't save any lives.  Instead we opted to allow the mechanics to inform the narrative.  I don't know if this really counts as "emergent" storytelling but whatever it is we like it, and I hope you do too!