Digital Insomnia

This game was made for my expressive game design module at university

Summary

Digital Insomnia is a game trying to represent the struggles of trying to sleep while being addicted to checking your phone. This is something that many people struggle with in modern society.

In the game, you slowly reach for your phone. You must keep your mouse inside the moving square to resist the temptation. 

Not reaching for the phone requires a lot of focus from the player but actually falling asleep requires surpassing that to reach a more calm state. This hopefully mirrors the feelings needed to resist using the phone in real life.

Inspirations

For the gameplay I wanted to represent the concentration and focus needed to resist the urge to check your phone. My immediate thought were buzz wire/wire loop games. My implementation of gameplay tries to emulate the same hand control you need to play those games and also has some added randomness to further represent how the mind can wander when trying to focus on sleeping.

For the aesthetic, I went with a simple look. I felt it would be easier to create a cleaner, more polished looking game with simpler graphics. I also felt it was good to abstract a lot of the detail from the character so that the player could identfy with the character more easily and hopefully experience the feelings that I was trying to portray.

The voices were taken from this site: https://www.pacdv.com/sounds/index.html

Development

The game started off as a smaller prototype. In the prototype the player reached for their phone as they do in the current game. The player had to drag their mouse to the left to reduce the amount that they reach for the phone. To discourage just dragging really fast, if they dragged too hard they would fall out of the bed. I felt that this mechanic wasn't good because it was easy for the player to find how hard they had to drag the mouse and do that without much focus or effort. I felt that having the character fall out of bed was too comedic for the tone of the game. I also wanted the final game to be winnable if the player was good enough.

The prototype didn't have a developed atmosphere, it had no sounds and only the most necessary of graphics. This was the main thing I worked on regarding the current iteration of the game.

I added sounds to represent the current mental state of the player. If the player is close to reaching their phone there will be voices and other sounds meant to be somewhat unsettling to further push the player to the losing game state. When the player is doing well the sounds become more quiet. I originally wanted the voices to be clips from memes/popular culture/news that people might browse on their phones but went with the voice lines to avoid any potential copyright issues. This drove the atmosphere in a more uneasy feeling direction. I feel this affects the atmosphere positively but sacrifices some relatability/relevance. I avoided using music because I felt that it would negatively affect the atmosphere of the game by overriding the voices.  I also don't feel confident creating my own music so would have had to use pre-made music which would be less likely to fit the game. Additionally, I felt that the use of silence contrasted well with the sounds that were used, giving a more calming effect. It also felt more thematically correct.

I also added some visuals to add to the world building of the game. I made a point of showing the player using the phone in the menu before they tried to fall asleep. I think this provides a good amount of context because, although it isn't stated in the game, the player would likely be able to fall asleep more easily if they were not using their phone before sleeping. However, in the context of the game this is outside of the player's control. People who may have this problem might not consider not using their phone before going to bed and might be reluctant to do so if told.

Further Development

If I was to develop this idea further, I could potentially extend the game to take up a full working day where the player has things they want to do on their phone and must strike a balance between maybe working, fun, and sleeping at the end of the day. If they weren't able to do things during the day they may feel pressure to use their phone closer to when they fall asleep which would make that section harder to do. If they fall asleep badly it could affect their work or give them less time during the day, so the player would have to recover their routine over time. For example the player might end up over sleeping and missing work, or be so tired that they perform badly at work. This would mean the player was encouraged to catch up on work before sleeping whch would accentuate the problem.

I also think there are potential applications for my implementation of gameplay in other themes to do with meditation.