Robin Lima, Narrative Designer

Death Bloom: Árveado’s Final Chapter

A poorly lit room with stone walls, and a wooden ceiling and supports. There are mushrooms growing on the walls, vines slithering down from the ceiling on both the left and right, and there's text written on the walls in a dirty off-white color, the text on the left reads "im not alone" and on the right it reads "the vines can see"
  • Title Screen for the game Death Bloom: Arveado's Final Chapter. It portrays a desk with scattered pages and wine spilled all over them, a skull, a few candles, and vines laying next to a leather book, which is also titled Death Bloom: Arveado's Final Chapter. The options on the menu are Start, Credits, Options, and Quit.
    Death Bloom’s Title Screen
  • A poorly lit room with stone walls, and a wooden ceiling and supports. There are mushrooms growing on the walls, vines slithering down from the ceiling on both the left and right, and there's text written on the walls in a dirty off-white color, the text on the left reads "im not alone" and on the right it reads "the vines can see"
    The first level, featuring text written on the walls
  • A book is being held open in the center of the screen, it reads "Chapter 3. Arveado, the Great Stag of the night, A vengeful beast, fueled by spite. Yet to taste defeat, Within the light of the moon, Will it meet its fate soon? Up to you, young child. Juizo" on the left page, and a sketchy illustration of a Deer-like centaur creature, with four legs, two arms, and an exposed skull and ribcage, and a full moon behind it.
    Level 3’s first poem
  • A screenshot which is heavily distorted via chromatic abberation. The text in the book is barely legible, but it reads "It beckons you from afar, it will chase! Tread with grace! Not a trace, of your fear can be shown. So take the coin, then quick, rejoin." On the right page, there's an illustration of a child running away from floating antlers and bright piercing eyes, and above the book, those same eyes can be seen.
    First chase scene in level 3
  • An open book which has a poem on the left, it reads "Once upon a time, a child and The Stag. Let it burn, the lunar light. Burn the heart, save the night. Arveado won't die without a fight. So end its story, The final chapter. So you may live Happily ever after.", and on the right page, what apears to be a burning heart is illustrated. Aboce the book, a plant-like heart can just barely be seen.
    The final poem in the game.

Death Bloom: Árveado’s Final Chapter was a project completed as part of the Game Lab class offered at the University of Texas at Dallas. In this class, we worked with a group of around 40 students in order to develop a short 10-15 minute game over the course of a single semester. I was on the Narrative Design team, alongside two others. We were given the prompt of “fairy-tale horror primarily featuring a storybook”, and the narrative team and I hit the ground running. I pitched the botanical aesthetic, and concept for the main antagonist Árveado, a deformed deer with vines for antlers. Throughout development, I worked directly alongside art and sound, providing references and real world research in order to perfect the portrayal of Árveado and the atmosphere throughout the game. I came up with the game’s title, and since we decided the game would be set in Brazil, I was able to use my background and implement some Portuguese throughout the game. Alongside this, I also wrote all of the hint pages found in the third and final level of the game, and worked with art to make sure the accompanying illustrations fit. Using tools provided by the programming team, I implemented all of the poems that both I and the other narrative designers wrote into the game.

Death Bloom can be found at: https://www.atec-animgames.com/game-lab

All of the poems I wrote can be found below:

deathbloom_robinpoems-1Download