Design Document

When I saw the theme of this system game, "growth", I immediately had a general idea of the whole game in my mind. I thought about my own growth. So in this system game, I designed a raising daughter simulator. This is a text-based interactive text game developed by Twine.

In my game, the player takes on the role of the father or mother of a newborn daughter and is tasked with raising her safely until she turns 18. At the start of the game, the player is asked to name their newborn daughter, and this name is constantly appearing in the following text. The player will be raising the child that they name themselves, which I think will enhance the immersion experience for the players. During the content of the game, the player will encounter many diverging choices, including various contingencies. The player's decisions will shape the child's growing path.

In this case, I didn't want to make the game too challenging for the player, and I didn't want the atmosphere of the game to seem so serious. So in the first set of options, I designed some options that were very easy to identify. For example, when your daughter is one year old and has a high fever, you have two options. One is to send your daughter to the hospital immediately, which will keep the game going. The second is to stay home and play on the computer, which jumps to the first ending, where the player is accused of being the most irresponsible parent. Unless the player deliberately chooses the wrong option (many palyers did that actually), at the beginning of the game, raising a daughter is very easy. As my daughter grew older, so did the number of emergencies. The options are not so easy to discern, and the player needs to distinguish them carefully to keep the game going.

My game is about being a parent. The whole game is a system that represents growth. The safe growing age of the daughter is the stock of this system, and the best choice for the player in the event of emergencies is the inflow of this system. Technically, there will be no outflow on this system as daughter will only age and not regressed. This is also a reflection of the reality of raising children in my design. Any misstep in raising a daughter could put her life at risk.  While making choices and watching the daughter grow up safely, I hope that the players can also experience the feelings of being a parent for a moment, which is all I want to see for this game.