"Gone Scrawly" is my recent work and the one that best represents my interests and the direction I want to explore. In this project, I approached it from an experiential perspective, freely exploring my own inspiration, incorporating my creative qualities, and pushing the boundaries of interactive storytelling.

Inspired by contemplation in daily life, "Gone Scrawly" delves into the idea of revisiting childhood sketchbooks. Those drawings, where reality and imagination intertwine, vividly capture the moments of childhood with crayon doodles and semantically ambiguous text. Can we still interpret the perception of that time from the cryptic images and words as we revisit these sketchbooks? As we grow older, the dimensions of our experiences change. Despite having different childhood stories, the perspective and pure perception memories of viewing the world as children provide us with unimaginable power. Designing a work that captures this essence from life is both interesting and capable of generating universal resonance. Thus, I embarked on the concept of a doodle diary game and an exploratory interactive experience.

Below, I will present statements on various dimensions such as the game's theme, gameplay design, and narrative exploration.

"Gone Scrawly" is a drawing puzzle video game, offering players a mysterious yet familiar world of doodles. In this game, players take on the role of an adult who has forgotten childhood memories, re-entering the doodle diary drawn during childhood. However, as memories fade and time passes, the colors and lines of the doodle world are collapsing and disappearing, leaning towards a children's strange script. The incomplete colors and lines form the enigma of time, and players can only unveil the mysteries of the past by using a painting and coloring mechanic to fill the graffiti world once created by themselves, until painting the whole world of childhood graffiti. Through this, the entire experience of puzzle-solving through drawing will create a unique poetic narrative.

Regarding the narrative exploration of "Gone Scrawly," it continues my creative traits in fantasy. The game combines the drawing experience of childhood innocence, strangeness, fantasy, and dark fairy tale styles. It also represents my first practical attempt in the direction of perceptual storytelling. In the design of the doodle world, I guide players into the eyes of children by providing narrative drawing scenes, puzzle guidance, and fragmented children's poetic guidance to rediscover forgotten perceptual memories. These design combinations will run through each page of the doodle spaces as chapters, with each page's doodle story having a unique sub-theme intended to convey and evoke player emotions. For example, the second chapter titled "Childhood Time" serves as the theme of the mystery. Unlike the standardized objective time scales imposed by society, the childhood perception of time is superior to personal experience. Therefore, the design is a game process of solving puzzles as well as an experiential process of regaining the feeling of childhood by constructing children's body experience to learn about "childhood time". Specifically, the narrative of the "Time Mystery" in the second chapter focuses on a child alone at night, extending the length of time through the long night and pre-bedtime fantasies, enriching the definition of "time." At the same time, Corresponding to the player's role as a middle-aged person recalling memories, the understanding of childhood time is deepened through a contrast with the reference of the objective real-time environment. Each chapter not only has a different perspective but also designs continuity between chapters, creating a holistic mental experience and memory for the entire game. For instance, "Forgotten Companions" theme in Chapter 3, explores the drak friend within the graffiti diary. As the dark partner in children's drawings and journals, is both a forgotten partner from childhood who is awakening in the player's coloring, and an extension of the darkness of the previous level. The conventional "fear of the night," presumed by people, is actually the child waiting for the arrival of companions in the night, embarking on adventures at unnoticed moments. This concept conveys unconventional native thinking of children. This reversal is manifested in the third level, completing the overall narrative.

Therefore, the design is a game process of solving puzzles as well as an experiential process of regaining the feeling of childhood by constructing children's body experience to learn about "childhood time". Specifically, the narrative of the "Time Mystery" in the second chapter focuses on a child alone at night, extending the length of time through the long night and pre-bedtime fantasies, enriching the definition of "time." At the same time, Corresponding to the player's role as a middle-aged person recalling memories, the understanding of childhood time is deepened through a contrast with the reference of the objective real-time environment. Each chapter not only has a different perspective but also designs continuity between chapters, creating a holistic mental experience and memory for the entire game. For instance, "Forgotten Companions" theme in Chapter 3, explores the drak friend within the graffiti diary. As the dark partner in children's drawings and journals, is both a forgotten partner from childhood who is awakening in the player's coloring, and an extension of the darkness of the previous level. The conventional "fear of the night," presumed by people, is actually the child waiting for the arrival of companions in the night, embarking on adventures at unnoticed moments. This concept conveys unconventional native thinking of children. This reversal is manifested in the third level, completing the overall narrative.

All of the above is achieved using the basic gameplay of coloring of drawing — extracting colors from scenes to fill the collapsing doodles with "memories" colors. Based on the disppearing memories about the past time collapsing the same as the world of the graffiti, a framework for solving puzzles is constructed. Therefore, color is not only the focal point that runs through the entire work, connecting "memory" and "experience," but also becomes the core gameplay for solving puzzles, progressing through levels, and completing artworks. The direct goal of interactive behavior is conveyed to the player through "fragmented childhood diary texts," and the combination of "fragmentation" and the "child" naturally forms the atmospheric conditions for creating a poetic ambiance. And in this work, players are not merely witnessing the occurrence of "poetry"; they need to find the key to drawing within the fragmented words, advancing the process of reconstructing the doodle world. For example, in the first level (tutorial level), abstract circular symbols and a bird initially compose the entire scene. Only by capturing the child's narration like "Do you remember a white bird?" — providing information on items and colors for selection — and "Always spinning and flying overhead before bed" — providing information for understanding the scenario — players can progress in coloring and awakening the complete doodle space, where children look at the ceiling, rotating night lights, during bedtime in the distant past. In the second chapter, the pathways for providing information diversify, incorporating a 3D scene as an objective space from the past. This scene provides more information for drawing direction and puzzle-solving strategies, activating memories of childhood, and providing clues. In this chapter, uncovering the answer to time, colorful decorations on the different hands of a cartoon clock in 3D space correspond to the coloring of the drawing to puzzle the riddle. However, the focus of this chapter still lies in the different perception of time by children. Therefore, knowing the colors, players also need to uncover the password of time through narrative exploration opened up by drawing, linking back to the previous coloring answer. In this way, I aim to convey my contemplation through the color answer: In this game, we are not just revisiting past habits; we are directly returning to the body of a child. Of course, coloring and drawing remain the only means of interaction. Such constrained gameplay is chosen because I attempt to make the experience more direct and the communication more profound.

In the initial expectations and conceptualization, I hope "Gone Scrawly" can provide an experience of entering this world, experiencing adventures through the eyes of children while recreating a diary-style sketchbook. It's like taking a spaceship back to that strange dreamland, intertwining the process of regaining childhood with the complex taste of growing up. When the living picture book reaches the childhood conclusion, what can we leave behind here? Or take away? If nothing can be taken away, facing the part we are losing, bidding farewell to it, is also a significant gain. Currently, I believe I have initially achieved the exploration of children's thinking and memories from an adult perspective and linked the two perspectives. However, whether it can truly bring the desired feelings and evoke emotions to the experiencer still requires a long journey, gradually breaking free from the confines of Self-centered design thinking.