Solarpunk Academy - nickydu.net

Solarpunk Academy is a Visual Novel game about mental health, superpowers and a new way of life.

The game is about being an amateur mental health therapistin a school of superhuman teenagers in the year 2041. Through interactive storytelling and strategic conversations, the player will uncover each character’s traumatic memories, and help the patients overcome their fear.

Started: Oct 2020 | Shipped: May 2021
Unreal Engine 4, PC
Role: Solo Development (Programming, System Design, Screenwriting, Art, Animation, Music, Researching)

Ongoing project. Expected release June 2023.
Download the alpha test from itch.io through the button above.

Dedicated to Weimei Chen (1938-2022), inspiration of Grandma Evelyn in the game. She was a devoted educator lifelong and the most caring grandma one could ask for.

About Solarpunk

What is Solarpunk? It’s a sweet but feasible fantasy.
Solarpunk is a brand new literary genre and art movement that envisions how the future might look if humanity has optimized sustainability, economic system and social structure.

Meanwhile, our world is straying further from Solarpunk’s ideology every single day. Capitalism, isolation, social division, dictatorship… Bodies are trapped in machines, and minds are oppressed by algorithms. I want to get my players’ attention on our generation’s mental health. I want to showcase a potential alternative to engineer our shared future. I want to bring up topics that would otherwise be too late to discuss tomorrow.

Worldbuilding

The story was set to happen in the year 2041. Everything went just as data projected — increased unemployment, exploding poverty, and world-wide monopoly. Severe pollution and global warming turned species and island into vein. Addicted to virtual products, people consumes whatever the algorithm feeds them in leisure time. Living as a particle of the giant machine we’re in has become a norm to many, including the story’s main character, River.

As River is about to graduate from college, he was invited to a mysterious school called “Solarpunk Academy” as an amateur mental therapist. It turns out to be the weirdest place he’s ever been to — every character in the school holds a supernatural power, after surviving a worldwide radioactive leakage years ago. Years later, they were assembled in Solarpunk Academy by Principal Jagger in the hope of making a change in the dystopian world.

Research & Development

Research About Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

A 10-page study and critique of TF-CBT, a seemingly destructive but science-proven mental therapy method, was written during the early stages of development of Solarpunk Academy. It ensures the feasibility of the in-game therapy methods, and gave directions about writing realistic scripts in this Visual Novel.

What makes this therapy method unique is that while trauma is mostly painful memories that patients do not want to bring up again anymore, TF-CBT suggests that learning to face the traumatic experience directly is an integral part of the recovery process. It even goes as far as letting the patient narrate their trauma, in detail, to both the therapist and the caregiver. Despite seeming like a destructive solution to weak patients, the method has proved successful with children and adolescents suffering through the adverse effects caused by traumatic life events.

Building a Cinematic Storytelling Framework with C#

I don’t want to make yet another “click and read” anime visual novel. Besides text, choices, music and sprites, there are many elements I want to include:

Camera movement and a 2.5D space (with depth)
Cellphone system (emails, maps, ringtones…)
Mini puzzles
Facial expressions and character animations

It’s impossible to incorporate these mechanics with popular visual novel makers, so I spent roughly 3 months on programming the framework with C# and Ink. The tool can easily transform any txt file into Unity commands to control everything in the game. For example: