Cross Back

WebGL temporarily busted; downloadable available below in the meantime <3

Summary

Cross Back is the self-discovery story of a person trapped in their own mind. It puts the player in the role of Sierra, a mysterious girl who woke up in Sam's mind without any memory of how she got there or what came before. It's up to her to help Sam resolve the unknown trauma that's locked him in his own subconscious before they're caught by a formless enemy that Sam believes to be after them.

Note on Genre

Technically, Cross Back isn't kinetic; the player is allowed to make dialogue choices that will take the conversation to slightly different places. But it also isn't the sort of "choose your own adventure" game I usually make. Here, there's only one narrative arc, one ending, and one path to get there. This time, the interactive element is supplementary to the story I want to tell.

Project Background

Cross Back is set apart from my other projects chiefly by its storytelling style. It tells a unique sort of visual story by using external media that tie into the game’s primary narrative. This means that the game relies on true cooperation between words and images to tell its story. In my previous projects, the words could usually convey almost all the story with little help from the images. But in Cross Back, the words exist only to offer meaningful hints to the player, guiding them towards a possible interpretation that in turn provides unique insight into the game’s plot and symbolic structure.

Credits

For the base game, I made everything! I did the graphics art, animation, music composition, sound design, programming, game design, interface design, Unity implementation, and writing from scratch. This game was made in Unity and written in C# in Microsoft Visual Studio. The score was composed in Noteflight, and the visual art was made in Adobe Illustrator.

For Deliverance (2018), which serves as the first mirage, I created the visual art in Adobe Illustrator and animated it in Adobe AfterEffects. For Red Knight & The Lost Treasure (2018), which serves as the second mirage, I created the visual art in Adobe Photoshop and animated it in Adobe AfterEffects.

I did NOT make the sound effects or music that appear in Deliverance and Red Knight & The Lost Treasure. Sound effects are from Freesound.org. The music is as follows:

• Deliverance Menu Theme: "Clementine's Theme" from Telltale's The Walking Dead: Season One (2012)
• Deliverance Gameplay Theme: "Ziost's Destruction" from Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011)
• Red Knight & The Lost Treasure Theme: "Awaken" by SZK from SEGA's Gain Ground (1988)

Both of the videos that incorporate these themes were student projects, and thereby use the themes under student use license. Due to the presence of these themes in Cross Back, no donations or other revenue will ever be generated by this game.

For Hook 'n' Lure (2017), which serves as the third mirage, I wrote all the code. Sam Rosenthal created the visual art, Gunnar Morkri provided the sound effects and music, and Alex Hart designed and implemented the interface. Hook 'n' Lure was created in Processing (Java).