Special Holiday

Special Holiday is a narrative game telling the story of the main character, who is isolated at home during the epidemic.

On this day, the covid-19 affected many people living in city H. Some people were forced to stay at home in quarantine, and some were sent to the cabin hospital. This massive quarantine came very suddenly. I heard all sorts of information every day, some of the information was positive, and some was negative. How do I spend this unexpected holiday?

                                                                                                                                 

Instructions

Discover the stories through the conversations "I" have with others.  Also, we hide some continuous stories in the daily news or on Twitter in the game. We have set up six different endings. Some of the choices you make will affect the ending.

A complete game experience takes about 10-15 minutes.

The youtube video provides a full playthrough of one of the endings. 

                                                                                                                                 

Controls:

Left mouse button click or spacebar to continue.

Left mouse button click on options button for choices.

For the best experience, we recommend playing this game on full screen.

If you click on any software other than your browser halfway through the game, it may cause the game to be stuck and report errors. You can wait for about 8 seconds and click "Close" to continue the game. Or refresh the page to start again. Sorry for the inconvenience!

                                                                                                                                     

Credits:

Tingyu Li (tli008)– Story, Art, Character Design, Programming

Han Xue (Me)– Story, Art, Environment Design, Programming

The game is made with Unity and Fungus.

The background music is 315 Piano Evolutions.

                                                                                                                                     

Development:

Spoilers! Please read the following text after you have played the game at least once. Thank you!

The game was developed from a prototype word game that satirised the way people receive and believe the information. As some unexpected real-life events popped up, we decided to merge this prototype into a new story.

Due to the modern internet, people can get information extremely fast in many different ways. Apart from the official channels, it's easier to get information from many personal or media accounts on apps like Tik Tok, Twitter, YouTube, Weibo, etc. On the positive side, this allows people to have more opportunities to have their voices heard, but on the negative side, the online information may not be objective or guided by a certain purpose. In fact, it is impossible to achieve an utterly accurate description of a matter. The only way to get as close to the truth as possible is to check from different sides and hear different voices, not just follow anyone's idea without thinking. To reflect this, we have listed a variety of messages in this section of the Daily Message. Some are independent, and others can be linked to a story.

Our aim in making this game is to give the player an experience of what has happened or is happening in a city right now. If we could make this game longer, like a month, the feeling would be closer to reality. All the endings, including some of the messages in the Social Media section, have happened in real life. But those are not everything. When we face such a massive social event, knowing part of the facts means not knowing the truth. There is no absolute right or wrong, and we respect all perspectives. So we want to leave all the judgements to the players.

Please feel free to leave your comments. Thank you for playing!