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Game Soundtrack
Mehrauli is a game set on a fictional isolated island, where a mysterious man has decided to create a theme park using monuments that he has stolen from the original Mehrauli.
The player accidentally stumbles upon the island and finds cassette tapes scattered all across the island. As he hears the recordings of the mysterious man, a story comes to light about his obsession with the monuments, and how it ultimately results in his embarrassment.
Development
The steps I took in the creation of the game were:
Visiting the landmarks in real life to understand their look and feel
Reading about those landmarks from credible sources
Recreating those monuments in 3D on Blender
Creating a basic first-person mechanic for the player
Arranging the monuments in the game
Writing a story based on the collected information
Recording the sound for the audio logs
Designing the level to give all sound recordings ample time
Adding the UI
Exporting the game on various platforms
Gameplay and Core Loop
The game is a #walking_simulator. This means there are no obstacles, no concept of lives and no timer or score. The player is meant to walk from one point to another while hearing the story.
The player moves from a first-person perspective, controlled by the arrow and WASD keys. The spacebar can be used to jump. Although the jumping mechanism is not important in the game, it can come in handy in certain situations if the player is stuck.
The path to be walked on has been covered in brown dirt so that the player knows which order to go in. The reward for completing the game the way it is meant to be is to learn the whole story.
World Building
The game is #surrealist. It takes a lot of suspension of disbelief regarding how the monuments can be stolen, how the cassettes are playing and where the narrator is.
The player is a foreigner to this island, and the only person present there. The player walks around the island, which is covered in grass and trees, and has clouds floating above certain places. As the player walks, the objects appear before the camera.
Content
The player has to collect the 19 cassette tapes to know the full story behind the man who stole the landmarks. The story begins with him greeting the player to the island, and then slowly revealing how he will use these stolen monuments to decorate this island.
As time progresses, it is revealed that the narrator himself gets too tired of doing all this work alone, so he can no longer continue doing this work. What finally happens to the narrator is left ambiguous
