Wishing Well

Wishing Well - Josh Plante - 2025

It was created as a story engine project for DGIF-3007 (Game Engines) class using the bit.sy engine.

My first time exploring the engine was a lot of fun, so I hope you enjoy.

What will YOU wish for?

Story Overview - Story Engines - Josh Plante 

In Wishing Well, the unnamed avatar is told by their mother that a fountain in town will grant any wish as long as a gold coin is thrown in; she also requests the avatar find a gold coin, and to wish for her health. The quest begins as the avatar explores the town and interacts with people and objects in their environment. The Avatar can meet and help the neighbourhood dog and/or assist a shady guy at the bank.  After obtaining a coin by helping people in town, the avatar can return to the fountain and cast their wish. There are a few different wishes the play can choose from, but ultimately, upon choosing a wish, the game is completed. And players are left to infer what might have been.

Process Reflection - Story Engines - Josh Plante

For this project, I wanted to create non-rigid player choice by creating an open environment and goals. Similar to games like Biomutant (2021), Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), the player is given a wide berth to explore the map and progress at their own pace, while a final looming goal adds extrinsic motivation. Choice is faced by players both by actively asking the player to choose their wish, but also by silently guiding the player to choose the path that will guide them to a coin. I started by creating the beginning and the ending sequences, and attempted to link the two by creating all the environments, NPC, items and dialogue in between. I found this was a good way to create my vertical slice, and not get bogged down with all the development for the wide variety experienced during the bulk of game play  

I settled on the bit.sy engine after playing a few of the games in their online collection and enjoying the simplistic art style and game play restrictions. It was a helpful engine for environmental artwork which I really enjoyed, and allows players more to explore many varied environments. I also had success as a beginner programmer in achieving different reactive events with variables and conditional statements. Bit.sy did feel rather restrictive, it lacked real-time animation options, as well as options for sprites. Working within the limitations does seem to be the charm of the engine, however troubleshooting and supporting documentation was lacking.