The way I crowdsourced, was through Instagram poll. I ask "Who will hold the power in NYC in the future?" and "Who can defeat Superman?"
They both got diverse responses. The most popular answer to the first question was "rats." So I added the element of rats trying to take over.
The second question was varied, but the one that stood out to me was "No one." That is why I chose to have Superman save the day in the end. And not have the rats succeed.
I used Googlism to help me come of up with the narrative behind the case of the "Orca Virus No." I knew I was going to do some sort of orca, but
I wasn't exactly sure which species. After typing in "Orca" into Googlism, it generated "..blue whale is the largest creature on the planet and is larger than the largest of the dinosaurs."
So I chose the blue whale, as it seemed to be the most menacing.
Figuring out the whales orgin was more dificult, so I used the Travesty Generator. I input the two ideas I had, commerical whaling accident or artifical lab testing.
I decided on lab, because I liked the ordering Travesty Generator came up with. Having the scientists realize their mistake only after the whale escaped.
My game uses about 57 passages, each passage is styled with CSS. Also featured in the game, is my autobiographical character X-YRAM.
The game takes place in the location of my "School Year" game, Heroic High, NYC.
Anagram was extremely useful for me in this project. Since I has adapting material from modern day, Covid-19, I wanted to mask the reality and simple nod to certain names.
I used Anagram to come up with different names for "coronavirus," it gave me "Orca Virus No." That spark the idea of making the source of the virus a blue whale
To top it off, I added a "19" to the end, "Orca Virus No. 19".
I used n+9 to mix up the lettering of "Pfizer," name of one of the Covid vaccine, and "Kariko," last name of one of the biochemists to create the vaccine.
I used Otter.ai to talk out ideas. I was having trouble figuring out how I was going to wrap my game up. So I spoke out the ending with Superman and Wonder Woman's family saving the day.
And also how they would defeat the rats.
The Oblique Strategies I used were 1: "Disconnect from desire," 2: "Tape your mouth," 3: "Simple subtraction," 4: "Reverse," 5: "Go slowly all the way around the oustide."
I interpreted the first strategy as to have my characters journey be born out of desire. I was oridinarily going to include a romance between her, 'X-YRAM' and Captain America, but
I decided against it. I the interest of showcasing a female heroine who has more of a story to tell than just romance. The second strategy was a great addition to my thought process.
I real life, I am a very talkative person which is great, however, I do think sometimes is hinders others' voices. So in this game my character does little speaking, but she does do a lot of acting.
The third strategy appears in the color palette of my game. I really into the two colors together and have been wanting to create a piece that uses them. It a way it pairs down the aesthetic,
but, in another, it's campy because of how bright the colors are. I used the fourth strategy to choose my villian. The user, when they first play, will think that the humans are evil, maybe even
Superman is evil. Then, there is a twist or a reverse and it is the rat, Rex. The last strategy was me checking and going through my game several times and then uploading it to itch,io and going through it again.
Repeatedly until it was error-less.
I used botnik.org to help me come up with a title for the game. I knew I wanted to keep "Heroic High", butI wasn't sure what to add after. Botnik gave more the idea of
roman numerials and the word "sterilization."