The wind and the wisp - an exploration of love and loss

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Content The Wind and the Wisp
An Exploration of Connection and Loss
By
Samantha Chuang
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
(INTERACTIVE MEDIA)
May 2025
Copyright © 2025 Samantha Chuang

Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank everyone who supported the development of this project, through its ups
and downs.
I’d like to thank Richard Lemarchand, my thesis chair, and Andreas Kratky, my thesis
advisor. Richard, you interviewed me when I applied to USC and I had no idea back then
you’d become such a valuable mentor and source of guidance to me through the next
three years. Andreas, you’ve opened my mind to the creative possibilities and ways we
express ourselves. This project would not be the same without your guidance. Thank you
both for being such valuable sources of support and guidance throughout my time at USC.
To my industry advisors, Zach Lower and Selina Liu. Thank you, Zach, for answering my
“cold call” email in Summer 2024 and providing so much of your time and game design
knowledge. Thank you for always guiding me on next steps for the design of the project,
and reassuring me that even pitfalls are part of the process. Thank you Selina for bringing
so much experience and production knowledge to the project. You helped me create
frameworks for making decisions and how to listen to the project on what it wants to
become. The project would not have been scoped appropriately and we would not have
been able to achieve our production goals without you.
To the thesis faculty Martzi Campos and Laird Malamed. Thank you, Martzi, for being a
teacher, a mentor, and a friend. Thank you, Laird, for always dedicating so much time to
thesis and providing a healthy mix of hope and pragmatism! To Mark Bolas, for putting up
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with all of my antics in thesis prep as I found the voice I needed for thesis. Thank you for
encouraging all of my weird prototypes because they ultimately led me to a project I am
really happy with. To Whitney, for all of the mentorship you provided me with my project
and pitching skills. I will never forget the smile and little thumbs up you gave me after I
finished my thesis pitch, knowing how I’d struggled with the practice pitch earlier in the
semester, and validating that my practice and dedication to improvement had paid off.
Thank you to my team: Akemi Nagashiki, Anooj Vadodkar, Bernice Wang, Daniel He, Dora
Tsai, Eggsy Zhang, Emma Leihe, Gracia Yolanda, Hillary Hien Huynh, Ivan Pu, Jack So,
Jichuan Bai, Joh Chung, John Mross, Joy Jin, Julia Wang, Justin Shin, Mohit Parashar, Nile
Imtiaz, Richard Ortega-Amezcua, Ricky Garcia, Robin Zheng, Shelby Zhang, Sky Lu, Tian
Yang, Xiongju Sun and Yichen Pan. Never in my life could I have dreamed of having such a
great team of such hardworking and kind people. You all have taught me so much over the
last year and I’m so thankful for each and every one of you.
Thank you to my parents, Kai-Yao Chuang and Su-Kuei Lai, who probably still don’t fully
understand what it is I do, but have always been supportive of my creative endeavors and
soul searching. To my best friend Anthony Cheang for continuing to help me grow as a
person and always being there to support me (even when I’m spewing nonsense).
To all of my classmates in IMGD and the MFA cohort of 2025. It’s been a long road for all of
us and I’m so lucky to have grown alongside a group of such kind and talented people.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments…..……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..ii
List of Figures …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………vi
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………viii
Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….1
1.1 Gameplay………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 2
1.2 Prior Art and Ideation………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 7
Chapter 2: Narrative…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 11
2.1 What is the Narrative? – Preproduction……………………………………………………………………………….11
2.2 Early Playtests and Prototyping……………………………………………………………………………………………..12
2.3 Chapter 2: Narrative Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………..17
Chapter 3: Interaction Design…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….19
3.1 Wind and Wisp………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..19
3.2 Establishing Player Presence in the Game……………………………………………………………………….. 20
3.3 Loss and Attachment……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 25
3.4 Creating Connection with the Character…………………………………………………………………………… 28
3.5 Chapter 3: Interaction Design Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….31
Chapter 4: Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………35
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..40
Appendix A – Production Tools and Scoping………………………………………………………………………………………………..41
Appendix B – Wind and Wisp Development………………………………………………………………………………………………. 44
B.1 The Wisp…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 44
B.2 The Wind……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………49
Appendix C – Technology Development………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 53
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C.1 Questions When Designing for Microphone…………………………………………………………………….53
C.2 Metaphors and the Mechanic……………………………………………………………………………………………….53
C.3 UI Design…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 54
C.4 Prototyping………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..56
C.5 The Speech Problem………………………………………………………………………………………………………………60
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List of Figures
1.0 Player loop……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 3
1.1 Gameplay…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..3
1.2 Wind VFX…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..4
1.3 Gameplay macro loop.……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………5
2.1 Preproduction playtests.……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….12
2.2 Autopathing playtests feedback.…………………………………………………………………………………………………………13
2.3 Narrative prototype………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..15
2.4 Narrative prototype………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..15
2.5 Core explorations……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………16
3.1 Wind VFX.…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………19
3.2 Most memorable moment playtest feedback…………………………………………………………………………………20
3.3 Introduction animation………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….21
3.4 Swing set interaction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….22
3.5 Swing set prototype playtest feedback.……………………………………………………………………………………………23
3.6 Alpha playtest feedback……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….24
3.7 Player/Wisp attachment loop.……………………………………………………………………………………………………………25
3.8 Current playtest data…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….30
3.9 November playtest feedback on who the player is……………………………………………………………………….33
3.10 Alpha playtest feedback on who the player is………………………………………………………………………………..34
A.1 Production mapping tools (courtesy of Selina Liu)…………………………………………………………………………42
B.1 Early iteration of the Wisp’s design.………………………………………………………………………………………………….45
B.2 Early iteration of the Wisp’s ribbon and cloth physics.………………………………………………………………..46
B.3 Early iteration of the Wisp’s ribbon and cloth physics.………………………………………………………………..46
B.4 Mid development Wisp………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..47
B.5 Wisp Material Experimentation.…………………………………………………………………………………………………………48
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B.6 The final Wisp design.…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..49
B.7 Wind as a character explorations.………………………………………………………………………………………………………51
B.8 Wind movement explorations..………………………………………………………………………………………………………….52
C.1 Initial Dandelion HUD prototype..………………………………………………………………………………………………………55
C.2 Final Dandelion HUD implementation.……………………………………………………………………………………………..56
C.3 Breathing interaction UI prototype.……………………………………………………………………………………………………59
C.4 Design changes of the breathing/blowing mechanics…………………………………………………………………60
C.5 Microphone behavior testing.……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..62
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Abstract
The Wind and the Wisp is an “alt control” (alternative controller), 3D adventure game
about two best friends; the Wisp, who has passed away and become a little white ghost
with a red ribbon, and the Wind, who misses their departed friend dearly and lacks a
physical form but manifests as a petal breeze. The two awaken in a mysterious, broken
garden, and although separated by death, find ways to be together again.
The player controls the characters in both third person (The Wisp) and first person (The
Wind). Through the combination of traditional input methods and the blowing into the
microphone to create wind in the world, control both characters and join them on their
journey through grief as they bridge the divide and repair a broken garden together. The
Wind and the Wisp is a story about love and loss, and seeks to build a sense of
connection in the wake of loneliness.
The purpose of this thesis was to explore how to insert players into a game. To make them
not just empathize with and understand a character experiencing grief, but to feel like the
Wind, who has lost their dear friend the Wisp. Through the use of the affordance of
blowing into the microphone, the game utilizes the player’s body to create a deeper sense
of presence while playing.
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Chapter 1: Introduction
What is grief?
There are so many different ways to answer this question. There’s the biochemical change
that occurs in our brain when we experience grief. Then there’s the emotional aspect of
losing someone important to you. There’s grief immediately after loss, and then there’s
grief five years later. Grief is a complex emotional experience that many of us have
experienced, and will likely experience multiple times. There’s a duality to grief and going
through the loss of a loved one. I’ve often thought to myself: “What a privilege it is to feel
pain, because that means it was real. But that doesn’t change the fact that it hurts.” My
interest in this topic stemmed from this mixture of emotions and led to my thesis question:
How do I make a game about the abstract emotional experience of grief in a
way that provides hope and builds a feeling of connection rather than loss?
Of all the experiences that create mixed emotions, why grief? Why is grief so interesting to
me? Eight years ago, I lost my best friend. When I embarked on my thesis journey at the
start of spring 2024, I wanted to share my experience having lost one of my closest
friends, and share my outlook on the loss. I expressed this during my faculty pitch in April
2024:
I lost my best friend several years ago. I was young at the time and felt really
lonely and isolated, because not many of my peers had gone through the
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same experience. Reflecting on that time of my life, I later on realized
something that got me through those times was reminiscing specifically on
my time with my friend. It was almost like they were still there for me, even
if they were gone. Maybe that was part of coping, but it helped me to
imagine they were still taking care of me. This was incredible and weird, to
feel lonely and not so lonely at the same time. But this helped me move
forward and find a new normal.
I am not here to tell a sad story, and I am not here to tell specifically my
story! I’m here to create an experience that draws from my own experiences
with grief to evoke the emotions that might occur, and provide a hopeful
outlook, one that remembers even if there are people no longer in our lives,
the impact they had on us will stay forever. (Chuang)
There are many ways to experience grief, but this is just my personal take and outlook, and
the experience I wanted to share via this thesis project.
1.1 Gameplay
In The Wind and the Wisp, the player controls both the Wind and the Wisp. The player
will enter an area, encounter traversal puzzles that the Wisp cannot overcome, blow into
the microphone triggering the Wind that assists the Wisp. The Wisp will then be able to
continue.
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Fig. 1.0. Player loop. Player loop for the Wisp and the Wind working together to overcome a traversal
challenge.
Fig. 1.1. Gameplay. Gameplay showing the loop in fig. 1.0. The Wisp cannot get over the rocks and cross the
river. The player blows into the microphone to trigger Wind, which blows the Wisp across the water.
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Fig. 1.2. Wind VFX. The Wind VFX that triggers when the player blows into the microphone.
The game opens with the death of the Wisp. A heartbeat monitor flat-lines, turning into a
red ribbon that falls down into a garden. At the center, there is a zinnia flower that
becomes stone, and a once beautiful garden becomes foggy and broken. The red ribbon
flies through the environment and brings a piece of cloth to life, creating the Wisp. The
Wisp meets the Wind, and the two encounter a broken garden and embark on a quest to
find flowers with abilities to repair the garden. These flowers will grant the Wind and the
Wisp unique mechanics through combined interaction. The Wisp picks up the flowers,
and the Wind blows on the flowers to activate the mechanics. The player brings these
flowers back to the garden and, one by one, slowly repairs it by breaking debris and
rubble, repairing broken objects, and blooming flowers to bring life back to it. At the end of
the game, the Wisp and the Wind have collected all the flowers back. The stone zinnia
statue crumbles revealing the zinnia flower is still alive inside but fallen over and unable to
stand on its own. The Wisp uses their ribbon to tie the zinnia upright again but without the
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ribbon, the Wisp will dissolve. The Wisp says goodbye to the Wind, and dissolves into
fog.
Fig. 1.3. Gameplay macro loop.
This section describes the final interaction and design of the game. However, the path to
this final product was nonlinear and the project underwent several changes. The purpose
of this paper is to discuss the creative development of The Wind and the Wisp, and the
process of designing a grief game.
Firstly, I will discuss prior art for this project and the grief genre. I will use these analyses of
other grief games to explore how it influenced early design decisions. Chapter two will
discuss the narrative challenges the project encountered and how the team resolved
them. In ideation and preproduction, the game had an intense narrative that was based
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more strongly on the traditional Five Stages of Grief (which will be defined in the next
section). However, narrative ultimately was not a major part of our final design or
achieving our experience goal. We shifted towards a stronger focus on interaction design
and having the player build attachment with the Wisp. Chapter three will deep dive into
the prototyping process for how we shaped the core mechanics and interactions, and how
this revealed that the core of this project is not grief, but loss. This section will cover the
two characters, how we used interaction and controls to establish player presence and
achieve attachment with the Wisp. Lastly, the conclusion of the paper will summarize the
challenges of the project, extrapolate what I learned making The Wind and the Wisp, and
how they might be helpful to others in the future making games about grief.
I want to clarify that in this paper, I am talking about the genre of grief games:
games that are made specifically about grief as an experience (for example, Gris
(Nomada Studio 2018)). These games stand in contrast with games people
experiencing grief find solace in, but where the content of the game does not
address the subject of grief. For example, The Guardian interviewed those who
were experiencing loss and how people were able to reminisce on their times
playing games such as Super Mario World and how it became a “mnemonic
device” for them. Super Mario World is not a game made about grief but players
could project their current life situations onto the games and use the required active
participation of gaming to help them “process their feelings, free from real-world
expectations about correct ways to grieve” (Flint). My thesis can be related and
create a safe space for those processing grief, but it is also explicitly in the category
of games about grief.
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1.2 Prior Art and Ideation
Grief games are tricky to define. Broadly speaking, they explore the “labyrinthine
complexities of grief… through a protective lens, letting us care for and guide grieving
characters, enabling close proximity to our emotions while simultaneously shielding us
from them” (Flint). These games move players through their storytelling and universal
understanding of loss of loved ones.
As part of my prior art research, I analyzed several games that utilized grief as a core
theme: Gris, Arise (Piccolo Studio 2019), Eternally Us (Sanctuary Interactive 2010). In all
three, the game begins with the loss of a loved one and shows the traditional Five Stages
of Grief as defined by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. The protagonists in these games go through:
1. Denial – Inability to accept the loss.
2. Anger – Frustration and resentment towards the situation, and often lashing out at
others.
3. Bargaining – The desire to change reality, filled with “what ifs” and negotiating.
4. Depression – Sadness, the feeling that life cannot go on.
5. Acceptance – Understanding that the past cannot be changed, and the ability to
move forward.
Gris opens with Gris, the main character, on the palm of a giant statue of her mother. As
she opens her mouth, she discovers she’s lost her singing voice. The statue crumbles, and
7

Gris falls down into the first stage of grief: denial. The rest of the game is spent travelling
through the remaining four stages of grief, and Gris’ journey to recovering her singing
voice. Gris moves players through its colors and character animations. In his video essay
“How Gris Made You Cry With Its Colors”, Daryl Talks Games discusses how color subtly
impacts our physical biology. For example, Gris utilizes red early on to represent Gris’
anger over the loss, and uses the prolonged exposure to the color to subtly make players
angry.
Arise: A Simple Story opens with a cutscene of the main character, an old man, who just
passed away and has awoken on a snowy mountain. After taking a few steps, the old man
is teleported to a vast lake where he finds a statue of a young boy, and the rest of the
game is spent travelling through his memories with his departed wife. Arise moves us by
taking players through the highs and lows of the old man’s life, using gameplay to evoke
player emotions. For example, after the old man’s wife suffers a miscarriage, he physically
walks slower, and collapses every few steps, creating feelings of weight and sorrow in
players.
Eternally Us follows the story of Amber looking for her lost friend Fio. The game begins
with the two in a peaceful park just before Fio disappears and a ghoulish looking creature
comes to taunt Amber saying “Fio’s gone”. Eternally Us moves players through its voice
acting, and mirrors player emotions with Amber’s emotions. “Notably, in one level Amber
is totally helpless, and there are those around her who can help, but they do not. The
player inevitably sinks through mud and falls down into the next level. These scripted
events helped control the pace of the experience, while also reflecting Amber’s emotional
8

state: she felt helpless, and the player likewise cannot do anything to change what’s going
on around her” (Chuang).
These three games share several characteristics that can be used to define grief games and
how they effectively move players:
1. Begin the game with the loss. This sets up the immediate conflict and
communicates to the player that the game will be about processing the loss.
2. Tell the story of a character going through grief. Although we as players may or may
feel sad ourselves, we understand that the character is sad. The characters have
also lost people we understand are stereotypically close, important relationships–a
parent, a spouse, a best friend–so players quickly understand why the character is
sad.
3. Use of visuals to communicate the character’s emotional state that players can pick
up on. In How Games Move Us by Katherine Isbister, “If an on-screen character
physically demonstrates signs of emotions, the designer can assume the player will
pick those up and feel them to some extent as well.” (79 Isbister)
4. Depiction of the traditional Five Stages of Grief. Drawing from a well-known model
for processing grief, players are primed to understand the emotions the game will
make them feel.
As I played these games, I found myself moved by these characters’ stories, through the
effective implementation of the characteristics listed above. Additionally, as someone who
had a personal experience with grief, I was projecting my experiences onto the game,
9

further heightening the experience. I started to wonder: how can we put players in a
position that feels like they are experiencing a loss of a loved one themselves? How can
we make players feel loss instead of projecting onto the experience? With these questions
in hand, I embarked on the thesis journey of developing The Wind and the Wisp. Although
the project has changed a lot through the last eleven months, the design goal was always
to develop an experience that makes the player feel like they are the friend that has lost
their friend, and in the end misses the little Wisp.
I also would like to put a disclaimer that these are qualities that I studied in Gris, Arise: A
Simple Story, and Eternally Us to establish a definition of grief games based on existing
games tagged with “grief”. However, these are not the only games about grief, and this list
of characteristics are not the only things that define grief games. They are just qualities that
I focused on during prior art research.
This proved to be the project’s greatest design challenge and we approached it from
multiple angles: narrative, controls, and interaction design.
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Chapter 2: Narrative
2.1 What is the Narrative? – Preproduction
During preproduction, The Wind and the Wisp drew from prior art and had an intense
story about grief. It had classic narrative elements following the Five Stages of Grief and
would utilize character animations to convey the Wind and Wisp’s emotions. There was a
level for anger, where the Wind is breaking objects in a fit of rage over the loss of their
friend. A level for bargaining where the Wind breaks an animal’s home and has to repair it,
believing they can control everything. A level for depression, where the weight of the
flower weighs the Wisp down until they fall down into the depths of depression. A level
for acceptance where the Wind sees beauty in the world and uses their abilities to bloom
flowers again. Most importantly, there was a major climax in which the Wisp has made
peace with their death and is ready to move on, but the Wind isn’t ready to let go and
prevents the Wisp from leaving. After a confrontation, the game ends with the Wind
accepting that the Wisp wants to go, and likewise the Wind realizes they have moved on
and also no longer needs the Wisp to cope. However, this raised a lot of narrative
questions. How would we communicate each character and their goals? How would we
get the player to stop the Wisp from moving on? Throughout the entire game, the player is
helping the Wisp collect flowers and repair the garden. Why would the player want to
prevent the wisp from moving on at the end of the game? The Wind wants to, but would
the player want to? Playtest feedback showed the narrative was unclear and complex and
the two core questions we needed to address were:
11

1. How do we communicate that the Wind and the Wisp are two different characters
with potentially different feelings?
2. How do we make the player feel like they are the Wind and not the Wisp?
2.2 Early Playtests and Prototyping
With these challenges in mind, we did rigorous playtesting early on with the mechanic and
character interactions. The very first prototype had the player controlling the Wisp, and
blowing away fog so they could move the Wisp forward. There was no text or
tutorialization explaining either character. These playtests showed us that players
identified with the Wisp, and didn’t even know the Wind was a character.
Fig. 2.1. Preproduction playtests. Feedback from 6 August, 2024, 5 september, 2024, 2 October, 2024.
This playtest feedback was logical and understandable. The Wisp is the character on the
screen players see and have direct control over moving them. There was no reason for
players to believe that there was the Wind as a character, and that blowing was part of the
character narrative. Design came up with two solutions for this:
12

1. Have the player only control the Wind. Players blow into the microphone to create
Wind, and WASD controls the movement of it. The Wind will pick up the Wisp,
and the player would have to balance the Wisp on the breeze.
2. Autopathing and Wisp autonomy. Have points in the game in which the player
loses control of the Wisp, and the Wisp does something of their own free will.
The former option was appealing, but would’ve broken other aspects of the game and
required a lot of engineering work to pivot. The second option, autopathing, was a feature
that triggered automatically when the Wisp entered an area or a specific event occurred.
The Wisp would take control, and move on their own. We playtested this and learned
people did not like this feature. Not only did players dislike losing control of the Wisp, but
they perceived it as a cutscene instead of an actual part of interactive gameplay. We
ultimately deprecated this feature because it was not serving our design goals correctly.
Fig. 2.2. Autopathing playtests feedback. Player response to autopathing. It was overall negative.
The importance and function of autopathing raised a few questions with our narrative
design: is the Wisp actually the spirit of the Wind’s deceased friend (which would support
13

Wisp autonomy)? Or is it a conjuring of the Wind to cope with the loss of a friend (which
would answer why the player can directly control the Wisp)? What exactly is the story we
are trying to tell, and how are we telling it?
With the original narrative, there was a very intense story that was difficult for players to
understand and feel like they were in the game. In order to address the disconnect, we
came up with the idea that text would represent the player/Wind’s inner monologue. By
letting the player know how the Wind was feeling, maybe we could inspire them to feel
the same way. We also fully fleshed out the Wind character and introduced a robust
narrative prototype that had a UI text box representing the Wind’s internal monologue.
Players reported they liked the new narrative direction and started to understand the core
conflict more, but were confused about who the voice belonged to. It suddenly felt like
there were at least three characters in the game. The Wind, the Wisp, a narrator, and then
the player observing these events externally. Although the narrative changes were overall
well received, it did not sit well with me nor did it align with the project goals.
14

Fig. 2.3. Narrative Prototype. Narrative prototypes that used UI dialogue box as Wind’s internal monologue.
Fig. 2.4. Narrative Prototype. Narrative prototypes that used UI dialogue box as Wind’s internal monologue.
It was at this time that I revisited the core explorations of the project.
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Fig. 2.5. Core Explorations. This slide was not part of any early pitch materials, but was part of onboarding
for new team members in the autumn and slides made to give my advisors context.
Introducing narrative and text that represents the Wind would succeed in telling the story,
but would struggle with putting a player into the story. This led to the decision we had to
make: do we pivot in favor of telling this story? Or do we try and adjust the current story to
be back on track with the core explorations? Or do we scrap all of our changes entirely? I
knew intuitively it was wrong to run away from one of our core explorations, but I was
afraid to express this to my team, because we’d spent almost a month prototyping
narrative, building UI systems and Figmas. Moreover, playtesters were reacting positively
to these new systems. This made me even more worried to bring up this design concern,
because we had qualitative evidence that people liked it.
At this time, my narrative lead and producer brought up the concern that adding a voice to
the Wind wasn’t in line with our previous narrative discussions about what the goal of the
game was. We had previously agreed that it’s okay for there to be ambiguity about if the
player is the Wind or not, as long as the core that this is a story about grief and saying
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goodbye to a friend at the end, the narrative goals are being met. Turning the Wind into its
own character is one way to achieve that, but it might not be the best way that’s in
harmony with the rest of the project’s goals, such as having the player feel as if they are in
the game. Players ending up feeling like they were observers of the story was "red flag"
feedback, as well, because it was destroying the most successful parts of our existing
design (see next section, “Establishing Player Presence in the Game”).
This is when I clearly made the decision to move fully towards developing interaction, and
move away from concrete narrative. The player is not just the Wind or the Wisp, but that
they are in fact the Wind and the Wisp. This decision not only resolved our most
challenging design question—is the Wisp actually the soul of the deceased friend, or is it
just a figment of the Wind’s imagination, conjured to cope with the loss of their
friend?—but also strengthened the feeling of the player having to juggle the complex
relationship of both characters. This narrative decision also fit into our existing design.
2.3 Chapter 2: Narrative Conclusion
The development of the narrative and decisions on how we should design the characters
and interactions was one of the most fascinating parts of The Wind and the Wisp’s design
and development process. Initially, there was meant to be an intense story, with the Wind
and the Wisp having their own desires and stakes, and utilizing the Five Stages of Grief for
storytelling and creating grief in players. However, playtest data revealed to us that this
was not one of the existing strengths of the project, and therefore would not be the most
effective goal towards achieving the experience goal of having the player feel like the
17

Wind and like they are in the game. The project had developed its own voice and
personality, and the team listened to what the game wanted to be to make decisions and
scope appropriately.
From here, our next step was to continue digging into the interaction, and using it to build
connection between the player/Wind and the Wisp.
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Chapter 3: Interaction Design
3.1 Wind and Wisp
It’s not uncommon for players to control multiple characters in a third-person game. For
example, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (Starbreeze Studios, 2013), a 3D puzzle platformer,
has players control two brothers simultaneously to solve puzzles and progress through the
game. We see both brothers on screen at all times. In third-person single-character
games, the character players see on the screen is often the character they control. For
example, in Arise: A Simple Story, players control the old man. What happens when
you’re controlling a character you cannot see? In The Wind and the Wisp, the player
controls two characters. Wisp is the on-screen white ghost controlled in the third-person
while Wind is the petal VFX that gets triggered when the player blows into the
microphone and is seen in the first-person.
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Fig. 3.1. Wind VFX. The Wind VFX that triggers when the player blows into the microphone.
3.2 Establishing Player Presence in the Game
With narrative decisions settled (as discussed in Chapter 2) I took a step back and reverse
engineered parts of our design that were working to push towards establishing connection
between the Wisp and the player. Consistently, many players mention the most
memorable part of The Wind and the Wisp is the very beginning. The game opens with
the Wisp pacing around anxiously, independent of player control. The player gets
prompted to blow into the microphone, which startles the Wisp. The Wisp walks up to
the camera and stares right into the player’s eyes, confused about who you are.
Fig. 3.2. Most memorable moment playtest feedback. Playtest questionnaire feedback from October
showed half of players found the intro animation and getting the Wisp’s attention the most memorable part
of the game.
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Fig. 3.3. Introduction animation. The introduction sequence of the game.
This revealed that just using the player’s body as input to the game is not enough to give
them a sense of presence. Wisp acknowledging the player and breaking the fourth wall,
and the player directly being able to impact the Wisp, is what gives a sense of presence
and creates a feeling of connection. Although the player might not feel like Wind
themselves, they will feel attachment to the Wisp by blowing into the microphone. By
having the Wisp acknowledge the player as well, we successfully introduced the idea that
the player is a force that is separate from the Wisp. This is the introduction of the Wind.
Ironically, as we were going down the doomed narrative path, there was another feature
quietly in prototyping that was meant to be coupled with dialogue: Points of Interest (PoI).
A Point of Interest is a bonus area in the game that reveals a secret interaction and a
narrative beat between the Wind and the Wisp. This interaction has no purpose in the
overall progression, it is merely a small toy that the player can interact with via blowing
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that impacts the Wisp. We were prototyping a swing interaction: a swing set in the game
world that the Wisp can get on, and the player can blow into the microphone to push.
Fig. 3.4. Swing set interaction.
The interaction can last as long or short as the players want. It is not a requirement to
progress the game, but should be something the player chooses to do, purely because it’s
joyful to play with the Wisp. This had extremely positive reactions amongst the whole
team, and playtest feedback showed players pushed the Wisp several times purely
because they wanted to.
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Fig. 3.5. Swing set prototype playtest feedback. Playtest feedback of an early prototype for the swing set.
We did not need to test with many people because it was clear playtesters enjoyed the interaction.
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Fig. 3.6. Alpha playtest feedback. Alpha playtests showing many players enjoyed the swing and blowing
mechanic.
We had been building this feature to support our narrative updates, but in reality, the
interaction itself was the nugget–a small piece of gameplay or an interaction that feels
satisfying or interesting on its own, and players enjoy–in our prototyping and created the
core loop behind The Wind and the Wisp’s interaction design; all blowing input should
have some sort of Wisp reaction output. The interactions should feel like playing with the
Wisp which will create a sense of relationship between the player and Wisp.
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Fig. 3.7. Player/Wisp attachment loop. Find an object that the player/Wind can interact with. Interact with
it. Wisp reacts to it or something happens in the world.
With these findings in tow, how did we design the game to foster attachment and a sense
of presence in the world?
3.3 Loss and Attachment
The Wind and the Wisp approaches attachment and presence in the design of its control
scheme and onboarding sequence (the first five minutes of the game).
Controls
In Games and Bereavement by Sabine Harrer, Harrer analyzes how video games portray
loss and attachment. “By defining what we can and cannot do, game systems do not only
constrain possibilities, but incidentally construe motivations for attachments” (Harrer 161).
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Harrer goes on to define two control schemes games use to create connection
compellingly: “tandem controls” and “call-response controls.” Tandem controls “constructs
presence by mapping two characters on the controls simultaneously” while call-response
controls “models yearning for a desired character, focusing attention on the desired
character” (Harrer 167-168). An example of tandem controls is Brothers: A Tale of Two
Sons, a game where the player controls two brothers simultaneously on one controller.
The left side of the controller maneuvers Older Brother and the right side maneuvers Little
Brother. The game Ico (Team Ico 2001) uses call-response controls. The player controls
Ico, whilst Yorda follows and can be summoned by a button request. The two control
schemes set up extremely different narrative biases for attachment and character
presence. Although the brothers have different abilities and an unequal power dynamic
between the two, they can both be controlled at any point in the game. Through tandem
controls and repeated usage of both brothers, Brothers’s “controls normalise the equal
presence of the brothers” (Harrer 168). In Ico, players are never given insight into why
Yorda is following Ico, summoning her by Ico’s request “amplifies the asymmetrical power
distribution”. Players are also never given an explanation as to why Yorda behaves this
way, diminishing her presence and agency. “It is not her choice to hold hands, it is Ico’s
anxious demand” (Harrer 169).
Control scheme and character presence was a major consideration when discussing how
the Wind would manifest as a character. Initially, we thought about having the Wind as a
persistent, on-screen character that would follow the Wisp around and have scripted
animations trigger in specific locations. For example, there is something interesting nearby
and the Wind automatically tugs at the Wisp’s ribbon to pull them into a certain direction.
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However, this would have established something similar to the call-response
asymmetrical power dynamic, and the Wind would have almost felt more like a
companion or helper character to the Wisp, rather than an equal.
The Wind is now only triggered when the player blows into the microphone and the game
cues the player to when there’s something the Wind wants to help with. For example,
there is a place in the garden that if the player blows, will trigger a special animation of the
Wind floating towards the swing set. Instead of the Wisp entering that zone and the
animation automatically triggering, the Wisp enters the zone and a question mark appears
above their head. This indicates that the Wisp is curious about something but can’t deduce
what, leading players to also be curious and blow, triggering the Wind’s ability to help.
The Wind and the Wisp employs tandem controls to create both an equal sense of
presence of both characters, but also create equality between the two characters. The
player can, at any point, freely WASD the Wisp, and freely blow into the microphone to
trigger the Wind. We use this to establish two separate characters, but also create a basis
for the player to form attachment.
Onboarding Sequence
The first five minutes of the game has two very important sequences.
Firstly, calibration. This is a seemingly simple text sequence that just asks the player to
blow into the microphone and teach them that when they see the dandelion UI, there is an
important puzzle that needs to be solved with blowing. But it also tells the player: “Wind is
your presence in the world.” The Wind is introduced first because it utilizes an
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unconventional control scheme that must be taught immediately. They are not a
persistent, on-screen character, and will suffer biases and lack of presence more easily
than the Wisp. By presenting them first, their importance is foregrounded and players can
understand more quickly they are a character.
Secondly, the intro animation as shown in figure 3.3. The player blows and the Wisp reacts
to their presence. We teach players that blowing creates Wind—their presence in the
world—by demonstrating how it captures the Wisp’s attention. Blowing will also trigger a
stream of Wind that flies deeper into the level, leading the way. Shortly after, the camera
zooms out and tells players they can use WASD to move the Wisp freely. The player
WASDs around a little, getting used to the movement, and not long after, the Wisp is met
with an impassable river and a dandelion. The player is prompted to blow into the
microphone, which poofs the dandelion seeds into a breeze, and the Wisp gets swept off
with it as well. We teach players that the two characters have unique control schemes,
and also have unique gameplay functions. There are certain obstacles each character can
and cannot overcome on their own, so the player must use both of them to progress in the
game. By setting up that the Wisp needs the Wind in order to move past obstacles and
make forward progress in the world, we are setting up a relationship in which the player is
helping the Wisp. They are the literal wind beneath the Wisp’s wings.
3.4 Creating Connection with the Character
How do we want the player to feel about the death of the Wisp at the start of the game?
This was an incredibly difficult question to tackle. In many other games about grief, they
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are about someone experiencing grief over the recent loss of either their own life, or a
loved one. Although we as the player might not feel sad the same way the main character
does, we understand that the main character is grieving. This is intended design and a
good way to onboard players at the start because, “if an on-screen character physically
demonstrates signs of emotions, the designer can assume the player will pick those up
and feel them to some extent as well” (Ibister 79).
In The Wind and the Wisp, we want the player to feel sad at the death of the Wisp, feeling
like they’ve lost their own friend. But how could we even build that feeling at the start of
the game? It’s easy to get players to understand that something sad has occurred, but it’s
difficult to get players to feel sad about the sad thing that has occurred. This was always
one of the major challenges of this thesis, and where it diverges from other games about
grief. Trying to figure out how to have players feel sad at the start of the game was not the
correct question to ask, but instead asking “what is grief?”. At its core it is the experience of
loss. So how do we make players feel as if they’ve lost something? Our design approach to
building up towards grief was to start building attachment to the Wisp through the control
scheme, onboarding sequence and interaction design. To have players care about the
Wisp so that when they inevitably lose them, they are sad.
In retrospect, this is similar to what Eternally Us did. The game begins with the
disappearance of Fio. Players aren’t told initially that she has passed away but as Amber
discovers the truth, so does the player. The game ends with one last conversation with
Amber asking Fio, “will I ever see you again?” Having come to terms with the loss
alongside Amber, players feel a little attached to Fio, and are sad to see her go. The game
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was the story about Amber’s grief, but the ending is the player’s experience of loss. The
Wind and the Wisp approaches experience design and the game arc the same way.
The game begins with the grief incident, the death of the Wisp, communicating to players
that something sad has happened. However, the game does not launch into the traditional
Five Stages of Grief. The Wisp does not even acknowledge that they are dead or seem
bothered by it, they just seem lonely. After meeting the Wind/player again, the game sets
the Wind/player and Wisp on a path of journeying together, playing together one last time
before the garden is repaired at the end, and the Wisp’s physical form dissolves. The game
doesn’t build an experience or narrative of the Wisp and Wind moving through the stages
of grief to accept what has happened, but instead provides a playground of experiences
and memories that builds an attachment between the player/Wind and the Wisp so that
players are sad to see the Wisp go at the end. Playtest data has shown us that players still
feel moved at the end of the game, even if they cannot explain why.
Fig. 3.8. Data from ongoing (April 2025) playtests of how players felt at the end of the game.
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3.5 Chapter 3: Interaction Design Conclusion
Is the player the Wind, or the Wisp? The short answer to this question: they are both.
There is a complexity with embodiment and coping with a loss. In my case, I was holding
onto memories of a person, like they were still there with me. But were they actually? In
Continuing Bonds in Bereavement, Dennis Klass and Edith Maria Steffen raise the
questions about feeling the presence of a lost loved one: “Are those whose presence we
feel really there? Are the voices we hear or the glimpses we catch of them just our
imagination? Can we trust the deep truths continuing bonds seem to have for our lives?” Is
the Wisp actually your deceased friend and they are still with you in another world? Or is
it all an illusion from the Wind’s imagination to cope with the loss? This was a major
decision point in The Wind and the Wisp and where playtesting helped us to resolve both
design and narrative questions. The existing gameplay of the project made it feel like
players were both the Wind and the Wisp, not just one or the other. The Wisp is not real,
but a figment of the Wind’s imagination conjured up to help them cope with the loss. This
narrative logic supports the design as to why the player is controlling both characters.
Is this game trying to say that when people are gone, they are gone? We have nothing left
but our imagination? Yes and no. Although they might no longer be physically present,
their presence is not absent.
A couple of years ago, I had a dream. It was autumn, and I was sitting in the shade of the
porch with my best friend. In front of me was a great forest, yellow and red leaves falling. I
pointed to the woods and said “I want to climb those trees. We haven’t climbed trees in a
31

while,” and I looked at her. She smiled and I ran off. I put my hand on one of the trees and
turned to tell her how the bark felt, but when I turned around, she was gone. I woke up in
tears, and had the feeling of the sun’s warmth on my face despite it still being dark. That
was the first time in years that I’d felt calm. I’ve spent years since debating. Was that her
giving me permission to let go? To run into the sun and climb the trees again, even if it was
without her? I personally don’t think it was her, and I think it was just my brain still
processing the loss. But does that make it any less real?
It was real to me, and I think that’s okay. We find space to accept this paradox. Klass and
Steffen state, “grieving is a relationship between the bereaved and the dead who are no, in
varying degrees, both absent and present. As lonely as we might feel in grief, the longing is
itself a relationship with the person who used to fill the now-empty space” (7). These
relationships of continuing bonds are an important aspect to “making sense of our ongoing
lives after death” (8).
Accepting this also helped me realize I am not as concerned with the steps to healing from
loss. I want to capture that moment of waking up to warm tears. The feeling that you’ve
lost something, but that’s okay. We abstracted our game and cut nearly every piece of
concrete narrative, and shifted our focus to “how do we make the player feel sad that the
Wisp is leaving at the end of the game, but also happy at the time they’ve shared
together?” Our experience goal is to leave the player with bittersweet feelings. The
paradox of loss.
It’s inevitable that players might more strongly identify as the Wisp than the Wind, purely
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because of the presence of a physical character on screen. The Wind’s presence is
abstract and must be felt by players when they blow into the microphone. As we shifted
our design towards a stronger focus on the interactions between the Wind and the Wisp,
players started reporting they were playing as the Wind as well. One playtester said: “I
don’t know if I am the Wind the character, but I think I identify with the Wind more than
the Wisp, if that makes sense.” It makes complete sense, and let us know our design goals
had been met.
Fig. 3.9. November playtest feedback. Players reported not even knowing the Wind is a character.
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Fig. 3.10. December playtest feedback on who the player is. Playtest feedback from alpha playtests
showing that players felt that they were playing as both the Wind and the Wisp.
34

Chapter 4: Conclusion
This paper has summarized the major development challenges of The Wind and the Wisp
and developing a game about grief. During ideation, there was a concrete narrative that
followed the Five Stages of Grief. It focused strongly on the story between the Wind and
the Wisp as characters moving past trauma and learning to accept what has happened.
However, playtesting and prototyping revealed that the concrete narrative wasn’t fully in
line with design and exploration goals. Instead, we evaluated what grief is and zoomed in
on the experience of loss, and used playtest feedback to determine what players were
responding to. This revealed to us that players liked moments that the Wisp
acknowledged their existence and how to use the blow mechanic to interact with the
Wisp, so we designed interactions and moments in the game for the player to build
attachment to the Wisp. This was done through intentional design of our interaction and
specific moments, such as the onboarding sequence and swing set. These moments
culminate at the end of the game, with the Wisp giving their ribbon up to restore the fallen
flower before dissolving into air, leaving players with a quiet feeling of being moved.
Harrer states “emotional spaces are in flux rather than containing solid truths about
grief-related feelings… The river changed. Grief changes” (Harrer 257). After nearly one
year of working on The Wind and the Wisp, I am reminded of my faculty pitch: “I am not
here to tell a sad story, and I am not here to tell specifically my story!” and a previous
iteration of the thesis question: “How do I create a game that reflects the passage of time
and its impact on the grieving process and our relationship with grief? My relationship with
this story and my grief has changed over time. If I were to make this game 5 years ago, it
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probably would’ve been super different” (Chuang). So how can designers define an
emotional experience goal for a game about grief if it's constantly changing? Prior Art
discussed how many grief games use the Five Stages of Grief to frame grief games, but the
Five Stages detail the experience of getting over a loss. What about the experience of loss
itself? I think designers need to keep this distinction in mind and will be core in developing
the narrative and interaction for a grief game.
Grief is an experience so universally understood and experienced that it sounds intuitive,
but because of this universality, it is hard to translate into game systems and design
patterns. “If grief changes not only inter-but intra-personally, design must make space for
this flexibility, broadening rather than constraining interpretation. The challenge is that
ambiguous design strategies make the designer more vulnerable, because they can no
longer pretend to fix the final meaning of their game” (Harrer 258). This is a rather complex
goal, because designers spend a lot of time communicating intent to players, ensuring
players experience some experience goals they’ve set out. But grief-based design is not
simply about making a game about grief, it is about grief’s involvement in the decision and
design making process.
The Wind and the Wisp has been an incredible journey of learning and growth, both as a
leader and designer. The game is immensely different from what I imagined at first, and it
will likely still change in the remaining month before the final presentation at the USC
Games Expo. But the river changes. The game has taken its own shape and we’ve spent
the last eleven months listening to a mix of design instinct and player feedback to let the
game grow into what it wanted to be. By relinquishing this control of preconceived notions
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of what I wanted the game to be, the game has evolved into what it wants to be, and has
been able to achieve design goals of building connection and moving players.
Revisiting the thesis question: “How do I make a game about the abstract emotional
experience of grief in a way that provides hope and builds a feeling of connection rather
than loss?” I’ve come to a few conclusions and would like to leave a few parting thoughts
to others in the future making games about grief:
1. Making games that draw from personal experience can be a double-edged sword,
and I suspect most people making games about grief have some sort of personal
experience with it. They can ring truthful because of this personal experience with
themes and subject matter, but they can also be tricky to translate into a universally
understood experience and game system. Deeply personal experiences often
cannot be translated one to one into game mechanics. Therefore, the design
challenge is to connect the player to the feelings, and translate the personal
experience into the interactive medium. Use personal experiences with emotions
and feelings to drive creative direction, but do not use them too tightly to craft
narrative or concrete mechanics. Designers must find a way to capture an
abstraction of their core conceptual components in their designs.
2. Many grief games use the Five Stages of Grief as setup and framing for the
experience. However, there is more to creating a grief game than the Five Stages of
Grief. Just because your game might not clearly adhere to all of these stages, it does
not mean you are not making a grief game. As Sabine Harrer said: “The point is to
open a game space in which grievers can experience their emotional projections,
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and this happens beyond the designer’s control.” People already know “how to feel
about love and loss; we did not have to educate them through a game” (Harrer
258). Do not focus too much on the subject matter of the game, but develop how
you will inspire your player to feel loss. In The Wind and the Wisp, it’s about
getting the player to feel attached to the character, so that at the end, when you
and the Wisp inevitably need to part ways, there’s a small feeling of sadness that
the game has ended. This is loss, and therefore this is grief. Grief is an abstract
genre and as long as grief inspires major decisions in the game, then it is a grief
game.
3. Listen to the game and listen to the players to understand what a project is really
about. Grief, as a personal topic, makes it easy to get attached to certain designs.
Don’t get too fixated on trying to make something about grief and be open to
listening to how the river changes.
Admittedly, I still have some anxiety about if this game will be regarded as a game about
grief and if it successfully communicates the themes I am working with. As discussed in
the prior art section, the grief games that I researched shared a few qualities. They:
1. Begin the game with the loss.
2. Use visuals to communicate the character’s emotional state that players can pick
up on.
3. Tell the story of a character going through grief.
4. Depict the traditional Five Stages of Grief.
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The Wind and the Wisp only utilizes the first characteristic and lightly the second in its
gameplay and storytelling. Judged by this list of qualities, it would not be characterized as
a grief game. However, grief has been such an important part of the journey and the
inspiration behind the game that it must be a part of it. I believe we have succeeded in
creating a game about connection and loss, and leaves players feeling both a little bit of
joy, and a little bit of sadness. Only after I stopped trying to force-fit the game into the Five
Stages of Grief and character-driven storytelling of what I believed a grief game to be was
I able to successfully craft an experience focused on the feeling of loss. We had one
playtester say: “I didn’t really understand the narrative but somehow I still felt moved at
the end.” The goal of the game isn’t to have players feeling intense highs, and depressing
lows, but to design an experience and space about beauty and subtlety. We designed for
players to feel like they’ve lost something at the end of the journey, but can also
experience the joy of having spent time in the game, and with the Wisp. “Emotional
spaces are in flux rather than containing solid truths about grief-related feelings…. The river
changes. Grief changes” (Harrer 257), and I believe this perfectly sums up what I set out to
do and have ultimately achieved in making The Wind and the Wisp. Grief-based design is
not about crafting a singular, structured experience of grief from a set of blueprints, but
about creating a space where players can open their hearts to the universal experience of
grief and loss. While frameworks like the Five Stages of Grief and defining characteristics
of other grief games can be helpful for shaping narrative and emotional arc, they do not
define what makes a grief game. Grief resists simplification, and the genre of grief games
remains fluid and evolving. Grief games’ ability to move people lies in embracing the
resistance to simplification, and allowing new expressions of grief to emerge.
39

Bibliography
“Arise: A Simple Story.” Piccolo Studio, Untold Tales, 2019.
“Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.” Starbreeze Studios, 505 Games, 2013.
Chuang, Sammy. “Prior Art,” May 3, 2024.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jwlKtgRcZv2GWFbrJ6V0D00gbhY2aHdNY
yTUTRbpi-U/edit?usp=sharing.
———. “Red MFA Thesis Pitch.” April 24, 2024.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rC4vdMWiz3TcZNKtWvrOged_Ds3zUat
teZKNnyPryQE/edit?usp=sharing.
“Eternally Us.” Sanctuary Interactive, 2010.
Flint, Emma. “A Space to Feel at Ease with Dying’: How Video Games Help People
through Grief,” April 19, 2023.
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/apr/19/how-video-games-help-peo
ple-through-grief.
“Gris.” Nomada Studio, Devolver Digital, 2018.
Harrer, Sabine. Games and Bereavement, 2018.
How Gris Made You Cry With Its Colors, 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-UD-aW2tpg.
Isbister, Katherine. How Games Move Us. Playful Thinking. MIT Press, 2016.
Klass, Dennis, and Edith Maria Steffen. Continuing Bonds in Bereavement: New
Directions for Research and Practice. 1st ed. Routledge, 2018.
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying. The Macmillan Company, 1969.
40

Appendix A - Production Tools and Scoping
(Full appendix and archive of The Wind and the Wisp’s development process here).
The Wind and the Wisp underwent a lot of production challenges and developed
frameworks to make decisions. The narrative prototypes and discussions discussed in
Chapter 2 led to a boiling point. I realized that the project was being pulled in three
different directions, and it was creating a lot of pain. One part of the team felt like they
were working on narrative and prototypes, another part felt like they were building levels,
and another part felt like they were working on interaction design.
At this time, my advisor Selina Liu provided a little insight as to why everything felt so
dispersed: “your narrative element is on this side, and the Wind and Wisp element is on
the other side. Your puzzle element is probably somewhere in the middle.” She drew the
graphic below in figure A.1. and it helped to understand the pain in our process was
coming from the fact that we were being pulled in two different directions. Building the
interaction (which is essentially focusing on developing the mechanic) and building the
narrative are opposite ends of the design spectrum for The Wind and the Wisp. If the
design goal of the project was to have players feel like the Wind and they are in the game,
it would be difficult to tell a concrete narrative, because it would be telling a story of these
two characters and not the player and the Wisp. If we had two years, more time and
resources, it might be achievable to tell a great big story about the Five Stages of Grief, and
build a relationship between the Wind and the Wisp, but that is not within the scope of
this thesis project.
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Fig. A.1. Production mapping tools. Two diagrams drawn by Selina Liu about a decision-making framework
for how to spend time and what to spend resources. On the left there are qualities present in the game and
the arrows show to what stage of production they should be brought to. Narrative is left in ideation,
therefore, it is cut from the game, and any narrative components will be very basic.
Selina advised me to write user stories, and use those user stories to drive what the team
spends time on. Additionally, I grouped the user stories together to see what parts of the
project were the most important. The Wisp and Wind, as an interaction, appeared in most
of the user stories whilst the narrative only appeared in a couple. This helped to clarify and
understand that narrative is not an important part of this particular project.
We used the production mapping shown above to drive development decisions. For
example, anything related to concrete narrative is cut from the game, because the arrow
42

for narrative is terminated in “Ideation.” The ending and an entire level was cut from the
game. This had some implications for the rest of the game, because cutting an entire level
changed the flow of the experience and the entire garden map had to be redesigned.
However, this massive scope down, driven by these charts, was necessarily for the health
of the game and being able to complete by May (scoping down honestly even made the
project better!) Additionally, since the Wind and the Wisp must reach extra polish,
because they are core parts of the game linked to the interaction, we should be spending a
lot of time developing their visuals and game feel, and ensuring they are very polished.
(See Appendix B for full breakdown of iteration on the Wind and the Wisp).
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Appendix B - Wind and Wisp Development
B.1. The Wisp – Full Wisp Documentation here.
The Wisp is the most important asset in the entire game. As an (on screen) character, the
player is looking at them all the time! The Wisp went through several iterations and a lot of
technical experimentation. It is a combination of texture and normal maps, baked
animations and procedural animation.
The ribbon and Wisp's cloth body's natural movement is done with procedural animation
and physics. See here for the final Wisp movement showcase.
Initial Prototype
The initial implementation of the Wisp was simple and rigid. The ribbon already moved
but it was by using Unity's built in splines for generating the ribbon mesh shape and
moving it at runtime.
The Wisp had arms that appeared out of its body, kind of like Eve from Wall-E, and used
those to hold a bucket or pick up flowers. Early prototypes of the game had the Wisp
walking around collecting water to water the flowers. During ideation, we explored a lot of
different mechanics but the Wisp was a constant across all of the prototypes! Since the
Wisp was so popular amongst early playtesters, we put a lot more effort into iterating and
developing the character during preproduction.
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Fig. B.1. Early iteration of the Wisp’s design.
Giving the Wisp Charm
As we moved further along, it was clear the Wisp would require a lot of time and
resources. We spent a large amount of engineering and animation resources in the
summer doing tech tests and iterating on core animations.
Implementation - Procedural Animation (Ribbon and Cloth)
Lots of engineering went into making the Wisp look more alive. The ribbon is a procedural
animation with a custom spring system. It will bounce around when the Wisp isn't playing
a baked animation (eg. picking up a flower), and if the Wisp comes to a rest it will return to
its resting position and bounce idly. The Wisp's body is also using a custom cloth physics
simulation which reacts to the Wisp moving and has momentum.
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Fig. B.2. Early iteration of the Wisp’s ribbon and cloth physics.
Fig. B.3. Early iteration of the Wisp’s ribbon and cloth physics.
Implementation - Animation
We knew the Wisp needed to have arms, but we didn’t like the arms coming out from the
Wisp's body when they needed to use them. One of our concept artists did an expression
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concept for the Wisp with a lot of movement in the ribbon, and then thought we could try
making the ribbons the arms.
This iteration of the Wisp was starting to show a lot more of the character's simple but
charming design in its animations and movement of the ribbon, but we got feedback that
the character could still be more lovable. The Wisp's simplicity was a strength in its
implementation--the rig didn't need to be too complicated and overall it was easy to
animate. But the simplicity also meant we had to be creative with finding ways to breathe
more life into it.
Fig. B.4. Mid development Wisp. It looks much more like the final Wisp, but very flat and not charming.
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Making the Wisp More Lovable
Fig. B.5. Wisp Material Experimentation. Experimenting with the Wisp’s textures and material properties.
We started experimenting with trying to give the Wisp more of a textural feel by making it
fuzzy, like Joy from Inside Out and giving it a knit-sweater texture. We liked the overall
direction but it was creating a lot of confusion amongst players. It wasn't clear what the
material actually was (some even mentioned the fuzz looked like mold!), and one of the
project advisors said we were creating a narrative in which deceased spirits are fuzzy,
knitted entities. We ultimately decided to scrap the change.
We got a paintover from an advisor that recommended removing the fuzzy emission from
the Wisp, and most notably changed the shape of the ribbon. Changing the shape of the
ribbon created some challenges. We had already rigged the Wisp and the ribbon, and the
ribbon has a complex in-engine setup to make sure the procedural animation and cloth
simulations work. Our biggest fear was having to redo animations. Fortunately, since the
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ribbon wasn't adding any joints, we scaled up/down the ribbon to ensure joints were still
inside of the geometry. It took a little bit of trial and error, and some back and forth
between art and engineering, but we finally got it to work and all animations were
preserved! Updating the Wisp model wouldn't create in-engine issues. We were then able
to properly UV unwrap it and give it a nice new texture and normal map to give the cloth
more ruffles!
Fig. B.6. The final Wisp design.
The final look of the Wisp has been extremely well received by players!
B.2. The Wind – Full Wind Documentation here.
The Wind was an incredibly difficult character to craft because of two design challenges:
1. The Wind is meant to be an expression of the player. We want the player to feel
like Wind, so how do we determine how it behaves or what it looks like?
2. When do we even see the Wind? Are they a persistent, on-screen character? (like
the Wisp?) Or only triggered when the player blows?
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See video here for the current Wind VFX iteration.
The Wind As a Character
We experimented with the Wind as a distinct character. We looked at characters like Navi
in Ocarina of Time or the Ocean from Moana (characters are not always present, but we
know they are a sentient being) but also Cappy from Super Mario Odyssey (who is always
present and will occasionally move when near something interesting for the player).
One concept artist did several passes on Wind and Wisp interactions, such as the Wind
tugging the Wisp somewhere, or giving them a head pat. The concepts were great, but
raised a lot of technical questions:
1. How would we implement the Wind behavior? How would we get it to interact
with the Wisp?
2. Is it a VFX and animation we make in Unity? Or a baked 3D animation?
3. Do we need a 3D model for the Wind?
Many of these challenges we didn't have good solutions to, and therefore weren't able to
pursue some of these interactions procedurally. They wouldn't be able to happen
anywhere in the world. Additionally, creating a visual direction for the Wind as a
persistent, on-screen character was difficult and giving it too many behavioral
characteristics made it feel less and less like an expression of the player. This was directly
in conflict with the design goals of the project, and we scrapped most of these changes.
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Fig. B.7. Wind as a character explorations.
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Fig. B.8. Wind movement explorations.
Adding Expression without Characterizing
We started concepting specific trigger areas for the Wind to manifest as a character. Areas
that prompt the player to blow and will trigger a unique wind VFX and animation. These
areas mirror player experience and how they are feeling at a specific moment in gameplay.
In the swing interaction, the Wisp will have just come back from the forget-me-not level
and a new area will have been unlocked. The player is already curious about finding the
next area ahead, we mirror this curiosity and use it to trigger a scripted Wind sequence of
the Wind coming to pat the Wisp on the head and lead them to another area.
We started designing the Wind's visuals to feel like an expression of blowing that comes
from the players, and to feel like blowing is the player's window into the world with the
Wisp. Instead of blowing to trigger events of the Wind as an entity interacting with the
Wind, blowing will directly interact with the Wisp. For example, pushing the Wisp on a
swing, or blowing a pinwheel that causes the Wisp to giggle.
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Appendix C - Technology Development
(For a more detailed breakdown of microphone iteration with videos and images, please
see the full Designing for Microphone Documentation here.
C.1. Questions When Designing for Microphone
When we started designing a game for blowing and the microphone, we had a few
immediate questions we needed to solve:
1. What exactly is the interaction?
2. What will the player be doing and how will they be doing that?
3. How do we get them to blow? How would we get them to engage with the core
mechanic?
C.2. Metaphors and the Mechanic
Starting with "how would we get players to blow? How would we get them to engage with
the core mechanic?" In early prototypes, we asked players to blow away a dandelion and
some fog. These were intentional choices. In order to encourage players to blow, we
introduced a lot of objects with real-world metaphors that signified blowing. Dandelions
have seeds that can be blown away, fog is something in the air we can blow at and will
react to our breath.
There are 3D dandelions in the game environment, and a dandelion that appears on the UI.
We tested the dandelion UI very early on as part of our calibration (telling players to "blow
the dandelion away"), which was extremely effective and players really liked.
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Fog was a little bit trickier. Early playtests showed us that people knew the fog could be
blown away, but it was very hard to communicate interaction distance. No matter how
much bigger we made the interaction radius on the fog, people always seemed to just
barely be outside of the range. We addressed this issue by introducing the dandelion UI as
the main driver of blowing interactions. In calibration, we tell players that when they see
the dandelion pop up, it means their blowing will have an impact on the game. Pairing the
in-game 3D objects that signify blowing with interaction UI was well received by players
and we developed a standardized interaction design:
For objects that need to be blown on (eg. a dandelion or fog that are puzzle
elements and will progress the game state), the dandelion UI will appear
when they can be interacted with. For objects that are optional interactions
(eg. pinwheel, or just blowing at the Wisp at any time), no dandelion UI will
appear, but all of these objects must all have a real-world metaphor for an
object that can interact with blowing or the wind.
C.3. UI Design
UI was particularly difficult for us to tackle. We faced a few issues early on:
1. Players did not know when they could blow, when they could not blow, and when
they needed to blow.
2. Players did not know when their blowing was impacting the world/players did not
know what output their blowing input was causing.
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We experimented with a couple types of UI. The first one was a constant HUD element in
the bottom right of the screen that would show a dandelion being blown away when a
blow was detected (this UI is similar to one in One Hand Clapping, where the developers
show a volume meter in the bottom left that shows what sound input the microphone is
receiving at all times). It would bounce by default if the microphone was receiving sound,
but then play a special "blow away" animation when near an object that needed to be
blown on. Playtesting showed that players didn't like this UI, because it still didn't really
show them when the game was receiving blow input and didn't communicate when they
needed to blow.
Fig. C.1. Initial Dandelion HUD prototype.
We next looked at Before Your Eyes. In Before Your Eyes, blinking advances time, but only
when the metronome UI appears. Players can blink freely at any other point in the game.
The game will show a blink animation, and occasionally a special interaction will happen,
but the game will not move onto the next scene. We implemented something similar, and
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around this time is also when we polished up our calibration sequence. Previously it was
just a simple screen that asked you to blow the dandelion away. We added some
tutorialization in calibration that tells players: "when you see this dandelion, your blowing
will create a change in the world". Players received this change very well and reported it's
very clear when they needed to blow. The downside is that some players became less
exploratory, and blew less often to see what changes it would cause. The introduction of
pinwheels (3D blowable objects in the game world) helped to alleviate this issue.
Fig. C.2. Final Dandelion HUD implementation.
C.4. Prototyping
The very first interaction we built was the basic dandelion. Players would encounter a cliff
they couldn't get to the top of, blow a dandelion which would trigger an updraft, press 'E'
to enter the breeze, float to the top, and be able to proceed. (See original dandelion
prototype video here).
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Prototyping Gameplay
With our basic interactions and microphone working, we began prototyping gameplay
that built towards our experience goal. The flowers in the game have unique mechanics
that can be triggered by the player also engaging in unique breathing patterns. We had
two types of blowing/breathing interactions. Continuous interactions would require
players to do the breathing pattern continuously to maintain an effect. Instance
interactions would require players to do one interaction for a set period of time for the
mechanic to execute.
1. The chrysanthemum, as the tutorial flower, didn't require any pattern. Just natural
breathing. This interaction is continuous.
2. The petunia required a big angry blow (like the Big Bad Wolf blowing the house
down). This interaction is a single instance.
3. The forget-me-not required a long, held, quiet blow. This interaction is a single
instance.
4. The calendula (before it was cut) required calm, steady breathing (box breathing).
This interaction is continuous.
5. The lily-of-the-valley required a quiet exhale. This interaction is a single instance.
For example, the calendula flower would make the Wisp heavy, but also be able to slow
down objects around the Wisp if the player breathes slowly and calmly. The prototype
was two parts. The first has the Wisp falling down and the player would have to huff and
puff to blow and keep their friend afloat. Players would be stressed out and scared
watching the Wisp fall. The gravity and blow counter forces were tuned so the player
would always fail eventually, and fall into a deep pit. The second half would teach players
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that breathing calmly could slow down surrounding objects, allowing the Wisp to pass
(eg. an avalanche of rocks that can be slowed down so the Wisp can pass through,
unharmed). This prototype was highly successful, and players displayed distress when
they realized they couldn't keep the Wisp afloat. (See falling prototype video here).
The unique flower and breathing mechanics were a difficult challenge to resolve, both
from an engineering and a design perspective. We had no idea how we would be able to
detect the continuous interactions for chrysanthemum and calendula. Having the
microphone continuously listen for specific patterns would make false positives (the
pattern was detected but the player didn't actually do anything) really problematic.
Additionally, if people breathed very quietly, the microphone would not pick it up at all.
Blowing is a little bit easier to detect because it does create noise.
One of the project's advisors, Zach Lower--the lead designer for One Hand Clapping--
gave us some advice: "are we using the response of the game to get people to sing or
make sounds a certain way, or are we using the way people make sounds to show a
response from the game?" In essence, he was describing if we want to build a very robust
and accurate system that reacts to the way the player behaves, or do we want it to be
loose and encourage players to physically do what we want, but the system isn't actually
strictly checking for it? Our goal is the latter. As long as players are engaging with the game
in the intended way, our experience goals would be met.
This meant two things:
1. For design, their main focus was to build experiences that encourage players to
breathe/blow the way we want them to.
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2. For engineering, they didn't need to build a system that was perfect, but they
needed to find ways to detect the interactions.
Design prototyped the chrysanthemum first. The initial implementation for the
chrysanthemum was that it would automatically clear fog as long as players were holding
the chrysanthemum and breathing in time with the flower. Players enjoyed and engaged
with the mechanic. Additionally, one player even reported that they were disappointed
when they found out the system wasn't actually listening for if they were doing the pattern
correctly or not.
Fig. C.3. Breathing interaction UI prototype.
Design prototyped many different types of UI paired with the interactions. However, there
were too many interactions and players were still confused about a lot of things:
■ "I wish the game would let me know if I was doing the interaction correctly or not."
■ "Is the game reacting to me or should I be breathing in time with the UI?"
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■ "Is my breathing actually having an effect on the fog?"
■ "I missed the UI, I couldn't see it or read the text..."
■ "Is it the flower doing the interaction or is it me...?"
■ "How long do I have to repeat the pattern? Do I have to at all or is it still singular
blows to clear objects?"
■ "What is the UI telling me to do exactly..."
Fig. C.4. Design changes of the breathing/blowing mechanics.
Unfortunately, almost all of this had to be simplified because there was too much mixed
feedback from players that it was not within scope to address it all. Additionally, one
player even reported that they were disappointed when they found out the system wasn't
actually listening for if they were doing the pattern correctly or not.
We simplified all of the interactions to be instance driven, only interactable when a UI
element like the dandelion appears. There are now only two forms of complex blowing
interactions in the game: single blow (dandelion UI) and held blow until an action is
completed (forget-me-not/pinwheel UI).
C.5. The Speech Problem
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Speech vs. blowing detection has always been our greatest challenge. It's not uncommon
for players to get through the game just by talking or making nonsense noises. We want
players to be able to play the game without their speech impacting it, so as a stretch goal
we are investigating speech detection and how we can cancel it.
Engineering has researched a couple of approaches and has conducted a lot of tests
studying the sound waves of different interactions. To gather this data, we built a
microphone sandbox and asked players to interact with objects and study how they
interacted with the microphone and if they could understand interactions.
The data charts below show 5 testers that were all asked to do 4 different interactions:
1. A short blow (like blowing out a candle).
2. A long blow (like an exhale).
3. Reading a sentence ("the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog").
4. A scream.
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Fig. C.5. Microphone behavior testing. Microphone behavior testing that looks at RMS for four different
types of voice activity: a short blow, a long blow, reading a sentence, and a scream..
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As of the completion of this thesis paper, the microphone still reacts to speech and it is
something we are continuing development of the microphone.
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Asset Metadata

Creator Chuang, Samantha (author)

Core Title The wind and the wisp - an exploration of love and loss

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Degree Conferral Date 2025-05

Publication Date 04/14/2025

Defense Date 04/25/2025

Publisher University of Southern California (original), Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag alt control,connection,experimental,game design,game.,Grief,loss,OAI-PMH Harvest,videogames

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Advisor Lemarchand, Richard (committee chair), Kratky, Andreas (committee member), Lower, Zach (committee member), Liu, Selina (committee member)

Creator Email schuang8@usc.edu,chuang.sammy.design@gmail.com

Unique identifier UC11399KAYA

Identifier etd-ChuangSama-13936.pdf (filename)

Legacy Identifier etd-ChuangSama-13936

Document Type Thesis

Format theses (aat)

Rights Chuang, Samantha

Internet Media Type application/pdf

Type texts

Source 20250416-usctheses-batch-1253 (batch), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection), University of Southern California (contributing entity)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright.

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email uscdl@usc.edu

Abstract (if available)

Abstract The Wind and the Wisp is an alt control adventure game that combines traditional input methods in video games (keyboard/controller) with microphone input. It explores presenting grief in a way that provides hope and builds a feeling of connection rather than loss.