Dobby
Our game is a visual novel starring Dobby the elf, a side character from the Harry Potter franchise. In our game you crawl into the world of Dobby and find out how his life works. You will have conversations with other characters such as Draco, Lucius etc. and will encounter big but also smaller choice moments. Your choices determine the rest of the story, and ultimately whether Dobby is set free. the game had to connect with a target audience between eight and 12 years old. We chose to focus on the age of eleven. Take a look at the persona below.
Concept
Dobby the house elf has a miserable life, as he is the slave of the Malfidus family. But Dobby has had a goal for a while; to be a free elf and be able to make his own choices. The player is given the task of helping Dobby achieve this, you start in the basement where it all begins. When Dobby hears something about Harry Potter coming to Hogwarts he actually wants to know more, because who is this special boy? Here you get a choice to go outside or to stay in the basement and obey what a slave should do. This is what it's all about, making choices. The player discovers the story by making choices that can change the rest of the story and send you down a good or bad path. The good path consists of helping Draco and distancing yourself from Lucius. You lie to protect Draco, burn the letter saying Draco misbehaved. This leads to the good branching out and you get an ending that shows the silhouette of golden trio, this reperesesent that Dobby becomes a free elf because he is set free by Harry. If you choose to tell the truth to and leave the letter lie to Lucius then your outcome will be the evil ramification. You will then eventually into Lucius' study room who promises Dobby to make him one day make his wish come true to be a free elf. But Lucius we know for longer than today and will never let this happen, he will Dobby always as his slave, Dobby will therefore never be free.
Goal
Is lying really always wrong? Or can it sometimes be tolerated? Who do you keep friends with and who doesn't?
A visual novel with the aim of stimulating reading, arousing empathy, and raising awareness that every choice always has a consequence.
Theme & ambiance
In our game, there is no consistent atmosphere. It depends on the location, the conversation and the music. Furthermore, the theme and color palette of the game is on the drab side which fits well with Dobby's tough life and the Harry Potter theme in general.
Character Design
For the characters we had chosen to use the style of night in the woods. This style looks quite easy because it uses little or no shading and we felt that the style was a good fit for the target audience because it can be used for both adults and children (universal style).
To bring cohesion between all the characters we looked at the most distinctive aspects of the Night in the Woods characters. These were mainly the eyes, they appeared in each character in almost the same way. Another important point was the body shape of the characters. Here we made a slight adjustment from the original because our characters are not animals. Simplicity was paramount.
After we had sketched the first character we used this sketch as a template for the next one. By doing this we had created a good foundation and could ensure that our style remained consistent.
To make the characters we started looking closely at an example of nights in the woods characters and inspiration images of the original characters we want to make on Miro. Then we started with rough sketches of the characters. With Dobby, we had added a little more shading at the beginning (see image below) than actually fit the style of nights in the woods. We did this because Dobby has no other elements like hair or eyebrows which would make it look too flat. In the final version we chose to remove most of the shading, but still let it show very subtly in certain places.
For the characters we had chosen to use the style of night in the woods. This style looks quite easy because it uses little or no shading and we felt that the style was a good fit for the target audience because it can be used for both adults and children (universal style).
To bring cohesion between all the characters we looked at the most distinctive aspects of the Night in the Woods characters. These were mainly the eyes, they appeared in each character in almost the same way. Another important point was the body shape of the characters. Here we made a slight adjustment from the original because our characters are not animals. Simplicity was paramount.
After we had sketched the first character we used this sketch as a template for the next one. By doing this we had created a good foundation and could ensure that our style remained consistent.
Animations
I made the animations for Dobby walking in the game and slapping himself. But also different emotions for different characters and blinking for their idle state.
Other then making the characters I also helped out with the storyline of the game this was a very curical step where the whole team was part off. Once we had that everyone went back to their original role and always helped each other out when needed.
Result
The study organizes a list of the best works every year this is determined by the teacher and from this comes a list of nominated works from that school year. Our game Dobby was nominated for a Golden Dot Award 2022. Click the button to play the game!
Dobby - the game