The Love of Crane

Concept

Play as a bird keeper to raise a female crane which fall in love with him

Tags

Simulation game; interactive game

Camera

Orthographic; Lowpoly 3D; 45° depression angle; Follow the main character

Core Gameplay

Have a timeline in whole year, with 4 seasons. Feed, clean and play with the crane. Protect other cranes away from this female one. Make this female crane artificially inseminated.

Art Style

Use similar art style with Untitled Goose Game   

Reference: “Untitled Goose Game” http://goose.game

Lowpoly picture style

Reference: hube³, Twitter https://twitter.com/hubecube_

Crane Design

A white-naped crane that acts as though Crowe is her mate.

The crane act automatically, it is the main target which the player need to interact with.

The Crane has three band. They are the level of happiness; health and intimacy. The crane will sick and die when the health level droping. When the level of happiness drops, the crane will refuse to interact with the player.

The white-naped crane, of which only 4,900 to 5,400 remain in the wild. The white-naped crane has a special behavior called "imprint". When they are raised by human and have never lived with a real white-naped crane, they may “imprint” on humans. When it’s time to looking for a suitable mate, these human-imprinted cranes will seek out a partner that looks like their presumed parent - a human. In this situation, the white crane will also show a repellent attitude toward other male cranes. So, it’s nearly impossible for the white-naped crane which imprinted humans to reproduce.

Reference: White-naped crane From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-naped_crane

Keeper Design

Chris Crowe, a bird keeper. This keeper loves the birds class when he was a child. He came from another state’s zoo. When he arrived the zoo, he is in charge of the management of the crane park. one day a special female crane has given the birth, which has the “imprint” with the keeper. For the continues of this rare species, he took on the responsibility of caring for and accompanying this special white-naped crane. For this crane’s health, he need to feed, pet and clean her everyday. For other cranes’ sefety, because this female will attack other cranes when they get close, he need to seperate the female one away from others. His relationship with this crane becomes very close. His friends even his family don’t understand him and even got a lot of cyber-violence from Internet. He never stop take care of this crane and the work of saving this species.

Basic action:

Walking; Petting; Feeding; Lifting; Brushig; Driving other cranes away.

Reference:

model from Unity Asset store

The Washington Post, Story by Sadie Dingfelder Photos by Lexey Swall Illustrated by Laurène Boglio (JULY 23, 2018) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/style/wp/2018/07/23/feature/the-crane-who-fe...

Interaction Design

Feed 

Keep food handy and feed it to the crane whenever its health drops. This action can be done while the rest of the process is going on. Player can also put food inside of the barn for crane to eat it by herself.

Clean 

Brush to clean the body of the crane and need to use the broom to clean the barn which the crane lives in. These tools are all located in storage.

Play 

Throw a frisbee to a white-naped crane to catch in the air and bring it back. The way that player throw the frisbee is like the way hitting the golf ball in the golf game. there is a bar with different zones, player need to keep the pointer stay in the middle to throw a good one. In this part, if the crane doesn’t have enough level of intimacy with the player, it will fail a lot.

Protect 

Protect other cranes avoid the attack from the human-imprinted crane. Because the human-imprinted crane treat the player as the other half, so in her opinion, if other cranes are trying to get close to the player, the human-imprinted crane will attack these crane even kill them to secure her rights as a partner. If the human-imprinted crane kills another crane, the game will be over.

Timeline Design

The timeline of the game is four seasons with one year. Each season is separated into three days. Everyday the player can do all the actions they want and the time of one day is 12 minuets maximum. Player can click the next day button to skip the day. In the end of the spring of next year, the player need to do the final action, which is artificial insemination and let the crane lay the egg.

Background Story

In July 23, 2018, The Washington Post posted a real story happened in a SCBI in US. Chris Crowe, SCBI’s newest keeper. A female white napped crane “imprint” him and act as his mate. A beautiful story about human and animals.

“If she’s still here when I’m eligible for retirement, I won’t be able to leave,” Crowe says. “I’d feel like a jerk.”