Cog in the Machine

About the project

This project started in January 2024. We had to choose a ‘fascination’ of ours and make this into a 5 minute playable prototype. Then at the end of the year, we would present it in a 10 minute presentation. Most of this project was spent doing research to support and build upon your ideas for the game. I really wanted to make something that would make the player feel really small and insignificant, as I find that a really interesting feeling, so I put a lot of research into this project. If you’re interested in reading it, you can do so here! It’s quite rambly at times, since I mostly wrote it for myself, but I still think it has some really interesting stuff in it. To summarize, the main thing I wanted to find out with the research was how to make players care something, give them hope in finding the thing they care about, and then destroying that hope by making them realize they’re never gonna find it, all in 5 minutes of playtime. I tried to do that here by motivating the player throgh curiosity, making them think they have a way to escape into the outside nature, and then crushing their hopes with both the reveal when the fake door opens and the ending cutscene where the camera zooms out and reveals that its a spaceship.

Gameplay

The game starts with you waking up in a small room with a locked door. The robotic voice tells you that you have been stuck there for a while. Theres a TV in your room with a camera panning in a forest, showing the beautiful scenery. The TV glitches however, and shows the numbers needed for the keypad that opens the door. You find yourself in a massive hallway, with what looks like a door to the outside forest at the end of it. When you try and open the door (the code to this keypad is shown on the glitching unlit paitings), it opens to reveal a massive staircase (way too big for any human to use) with giant cogs and machinery, completely shattering the illusion of the nice forest. You can wander here and do some parkour to make your way up the stairs, but ultimately, there is no way you’re getting out, and after 5 minutes, the camera goes up and zooms out to reveal that you’re in a massive spaceship, nowhere near any nature or forest. The camera zooms out indefinitly…