Sphere of Influence Concept Document

2-Sentence Pitch:

Make friends with all 8 billion people on Earth in this simple, momentum-based game. Flex your sphere of influence, tactically swap your BFF, and spend quality time with as many people as possible to become the friendliest person in the world.

Concept Art:

Core Gameplay:

The player controls a hoop (their sphere of influence) in a 2D plane. They can rock it back and forth, but it’s resting on a peg which represents their current best friend. By moving the hoop to touch various dots, the player will increase the number of friends they have, which will also increase the size of the hoop. The goal is to touch all of the dots and become friends with everyone on Earth, but there are multiple ways to do it. The player can use momentum to leave their peg and reach dots that are far away from their starting position. They can also land on a different peg, which means that they have a new best friend and can contact new people more easily. However, if they spend too much time away from friends that they’ve already made, those friends will begin to resent them and will need to be won back. At a certain point, those friendships will completely sour, meaning that the player can’t win them back and that their total number of friends decreases.

Controls:

The player can spin the hoop around a peg by using the left and right arrow keys. In order to travel between pegs/best friends, they can turn off collision on the ring by pressing the spacebar. The hoop will then fly through the air at an angle, carrying its momentum with it. The player can press the spacebar again to regain collision. If they time it right, they will regain collision when there’s a peg inside the hoop, changing their best friend and giving them a new vantage point to meet different people.

Structure:

The game will be split into levels. In the later levels, each individual dot will represent more and more people, so that there doesn’t actually have to be 8 billion dots on the screen at once. Level 1 will introduce the player to the basics of movement and befriending. Level 2 will introduce the player to the concept of switching your best friend and of souring friendships.

Plot:

The player character wants to become friends with all 8 billion people on Earth. When they accomplish this, they die, and everyone comes to their funeral. There will be at least three different endings: the normal ending (player gets all 8 billion friends), the bad ending (player had friendships that soured), and the best ending (player kept their best friend the same throughout the whole game). Any additional plot will only be added if there’s extra development time, 

Characters:

The player will be able to enter their own name to customize their character. Each of the best friend pegs will have set names, starting with Fatima Mason, your first best friend.

Level Design:

After level 1, levels will be designed in a way that forces the player to choose whether they want to switch their best friend in order to gain a more strategic vantage point, or keep their best friend the same while having to perform more impressive acrobatics.

Art Design:

The art direction will be very minimalistic, with simple shapes and colors on a white background. The UI font will be thin. If there is spare development time, each best friend peg, instead of just being a black dot, will be a cartoon human face. Mini Metro (shown below) is a game whose art design I am taking inspiration from.

UI:

The number of friends that the player has will be visible on screen. The dopamine that you get from the number increasing is meant to simulate a social-media-esque experience. Your current best friend will also be shown on the user interface.

Sound Design:

Sound design will not be a high priority for me, but if I have the time and ability, I would like for all the sound effects to be very gentle. Maybe each time the player gets a cluster of friends, a wind chime plays.

Engine:

I have begun work on the game in Unity. I am less proficient with it when compared to Unreal or p5.js, but I think that Unity makes the most sense for this project considering its scale and its 2D art style. Coding in C# will be the biggest hurdle that I have to overcome to see this project to fruition.

Development Roadmap:

This is the order in which I intend to complete major development milestones:

• Program game mechanics (adding basic controls to the player hoop, befriending dots, dots growing resentful after time spent away from the player)
• Tweak player movement until it feels intuitive and fun
• Create UI
• Create tutorial/Level 1, which will contain the game’s narrative
• Design remaining levels

At this point, the game would be a potentially shippable product. However, there is still more that I hope to accomplish with it.

• Create multiple endings
• Design best friend sprites for the pegs
• Add sound effects
• Flesh out the story, give dialogue to the best friends
• Draw backgrounds for each level

At this point, I would be very happy with the state of the game.

Statement of Purpose:

With my solo projects, I like to make games that have unconventional control schemes and absurd premises. Obviously, it is impossible to become friends with everyone on Earth in a single lifetime, which is why I think it’d be a fun concept to explore in a game. It seems like a cutely naive goal on the surface, but it becomes a bit icky when you think about the logistics. If someone really was trying to make as many friends as possible, they would likely abandon their old friends in order to meet new people. This is why I added the mechanics of resentment and the different endings depending on whether or not the player keeps their best friend the same throughout the whole game.