Adulting – Demo

Adulting is an interactive visual novel tackling the topic of the perception of being and becoming an adult in society as well as the question of what triggers this feeling of being an adult. In doing so, we not only want to shed light on the process that a teenager goes through to become a young adult, but also look at older groups of people. It is a third person side scroller and a single player. Adulting’s unique style combines two-dimensional as well as three-dimensional art to reflect the look and feel of comics and graphic novels. Set in different apartments it should give the player a closer look into the lives of the three main characters.

Growing older has nothing to do with feeling grown up.

The goal is to embed the feeling of insecurity that accompanies the term »being an adult« in the form of a visual, interactive story and to enable the recipients to deal with this topic individually but also socially.
The game is a group project realized at the University of Applied Sciences with five master students of computeranimation, communication design and audio. The project is created with Unreal Engine 5 and Blueprinting systems since there weren't any coders involved in the main team as well as Wwise for Audio. The language is English and the platform is for Windows PC. It’s scheduled to be probably also released on Steam somewhere in 2023.

Key Features

Players explore an interactive story inspired by being an adult and featuring engaging mini-games as well as point-andclick interactions with dialogue.

GRAPHICS
By combining 2D and 3D art styles Adulting reflects with a hand drawn look and feel comics and graphic novels. It features hand painted assets as well as 2D character animations. This gives it a unique art style which is easily recognizable.

THEME
The topic of the perception of being and becoming an adult in society is personified with three main characters and their individual struggle with the theme. In preparation the development team invested in a 3 month long research by interviewing psychologists and collaborating with the Sigmund Freud Private University Linz as well as making an online survey with over 70 participants.

MINI-GAMES
Throughout the story the player will encounter light mini-games that they must complete to continue progressing. It features 12 mini-games with various styles of gameplay.

COMMUNITY INTEGRATION
Inspired by Kind Words, the community will be integrated into the game by sending and receiving messages in the form of paper planes. Here, own thoughts can be written down and decorated with stickers.

SOUNDTRACK
A coherent soundtrack with individual themes per character ensures that players are immersed in a calm but emotional atmosphere. Full Soundtrack is available on Spotify.

Characters

LIV
Liv is a 23-year-old single student who is pursuing a university education in the creative industry as well as a part-time job. She has financial difficulties, as her parents also have to support her other siblings financially. The pressure to get her adult life together financially in addition to education and work is growing.

ALBERT
Albert is a man in his mid-40s with two children. He has difficulty taking care of his two children and all his other adult responsibilities, such as his own florist store, because his partner‘s job often prevents him from being at home.

FINJA
Finja is a 70-year-old pensioner who has particular difficulties with loneliness, as it is difficult for her to stay in contact with her friends, as she no longer has the possibility to travel long distances due to her age. Her family through their busy adult life also do not have much time to visit her.

Gameplay

»Adulting« is an experience focusing heavily on storytelling and mini games which evoke a specific emotion. It’s narrative focused and tells its story through exploration, mini games and community integration. The story focuses on three characters, each with 3 acts of the story whereas the storylines are linear. The setting is a multi-apartment building, in which only the respective apartment of the character can be seen, as well as a connecting staircase and a roof terrace. There is also an external florist store. All those light interactions and additional dialogue focus on different problematic aspects of our three characters who should represent different age groups who are struggling with different aspects of being an adult. These mini games vary in gameplay and style. They are presented through the narrative and support the story in meaningful ways. Furthermore it features point-and-click events which trigger short animations or dialogues giving the characters and environments more context. Additionally to clickable storytelling interactions the player can also write messages and send them to other players to share how they feel and get comfort. Writing and sending these messages to other players can take place at any time during the course of the action. With the help of a scrapbook that can be accessed at any time, the player can send messages and read and store collected paper planes.

Technical Details

MAIN CONTROLS
Walk left or right with A and D. 
Run by holding down shift while walking. 
Jump with Spacebar. Controls vary in the mini games. Open and close the scrapbook by pressing S or pressing the book icon in the left corner.
We would recommend playing in fullscreen. Be aware that it can take a bit longer to load the next level, be patient!

RECOMMENDED SPECS
OS: Windows 7
CPU / Processor: Intel i7-5930K
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti or equavelent
Storage: 3GB available space

Where we're at

Since this game is a student project and our studies are coming to an end we think the project is in a good state. But we are eagerly work on several improvements. If you have any feedback or input we would love to hear from you! :)  Here on itch you can find the Demo Version. The full version will be released polished on steam this year! The more people play the game, the more experience is gained and exchange takes place.

RELEASE
Demo Version August 2023 itch.io
Full Version 2024 Steam

PLATFORMS
PC, Windows
itch.io, (Steam)

Team

We are a group of five students currently finishing our master studies at the University of Applied Sciences Salzburg. We study MultiMediaArt, specializing in different aspects such as computeranimation, audio or communication design. Additionally we had several other people helping us out in different disciplines.

You can follow and support us on our social media channels too:
https://linktr.ee/adulting_thegame

Or if you want to listen to the soundtrack of our game you can find it on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/3iAhdIm20oO7e08VjhMTfE?si=wc9bP3cNSkaIKSiqjRdi5A&...

Or if you want to give your input we would be happy if you like to fill out our survey:
https://forms.gle/JYq7xeZccV3FHKXM7