During the story development, I wanted to provide the player with the option to select their main character's gender. Male or Female. The character's name by default would be 'Zima'. A russian origin. The images below show the before and after of a character selection when the mouse hovers over either character. A silhouette would appear behind them to show digital interactivity.
My initial idea for their character backstory would be that they were an Investigative-Operative serving under an Empress (See Bottom Image) of the 'United Nordic Kingdoms', comprising of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. I eventually decided to scrap this backstory entirely as it was complicating the plot and adding unnecessary detailed lore towards the psychological horror theme. Instead I shaped Zima to remain as an Investigator-Operative, more like a Detective than an espionage agent. I removed the Empress character from the script and changed how Zima starts off the story.
I should also mention, before I even chose to head towards psychological-horror, I was intending to create a Space Sci-Fi visual novel like I did the year before, but rather more in-depth. Unfortunately, due to time constriction, I would not have the needed assets in time nor the gameplay time to produce a detailed, lengthy storyline. I feel that switching away from that was a wise-decision as I AM HOME enables me to show off what I have learnt throughout the years of Media, Cinematography, Coding, as well as the Artistic and Musical implementation.
