GAME DESIGN CONCEPT
Ìtàn: Moonlight Tales.
HIGH-LEVEL CONCEPT/DESIGN
Concept statement
Sit at a moonlit fire, answer the call of the storyteller and step into the tales of Ìjàpá, the trickster tortoise; pick up Yoruba words along the way.
Genre(s):
Narrative VR, History, Culture, Education.
Game Persona and POV
Name: Oyindamola
Age: 17
Illustration:
Who is she: Oyinda is a first-year university student in Lagos. Her parents speak Yoruba at home, but she grew up responding in English, so she understands more than she can speak.
Interests: Content Creation, Cultural Identity through fashion, Afrobeats addict, weekend outings with friends to malls, museums, art installations and anything that can make a good picture/video.
Why this matters to her: When she was younger, her grandma used to tell her Ìjàpástories. She starts to seek deeper ways to connect back to those memories, and that’s where Itan comes in. It allows her to relive those experiences at a venue she’d visit, in a format she can share.
Emotions I want to evoke: Warmth, Amusement, Pride.
What keeps them engaged: The call and response pulls them in first. Then the visual feels immersive, like one is in a different space. There is a word calabash that gives visible progress on the words to be learnt from the story. Afterwards, there’s a quiz/game to test their knowledge of both language and understanding of the storyline.
Unique Selling Points
- Created on a genuine Yoruba tradition. It is all wrapped up in the “Àlọ́ o!” moonlight storytelling group, including the call and response that initiates each story.
- Language is acquired within the story. Words are simply taught when the story requires them, and are then used immediately.
- The story is led by the player’s voice. The story starts with answering the elder out loud. It doesn’t require speech recognition for Yoruba and only tests to see if the player spoke.
- Designed for venues from day one. It’s suitable for museums and recreation centres because of the short duration of the sitting time, easy reset between viewers and no walking around the room.
- Authentic voices. Voicing of the elder and all Yoruba words are by native speakers and not TTS.
- Built to grow. Stories and words are stored as data, thus new stories (and later, story packs from other cultures) are mostly content work.
Visual and Audio Style
Look:
Abstract low poly, with warm painterly lighting. The hub is a Yoruba family compound at night: earth walls, an edge of the roof covered with thatch, a courtyard, and a crackling fire beneath a large moon. Indigo Night (inspired by “adire” cloth) is the palette against Orange Firelight. The word calabash and the UI frames have adire patterns.
The story world is brighter and more saturated than the hub; entering the story world feels like stepping into a dream. It is designed like a diorama from a storybook; simple shapes and intense colour.
The reasons for low poly is that it can be achieved by one developer, it’s not so demanding on a standalone headset, and it makes the art look like a storybook version of the folklore without trying to achieve realism.
Audio:
- Night ambience: fire crackle, crickets, distant drums
- Narration of the elder in English, along with Yoruba words and phrases used; subtitles in English.
- Slow and clear recordings of each word taught by a native speaker
- Spatial audio, so that the elder’s voice comes from the elder and the birds’ calls come from the birds.
- Short musical stings (when the player answers or repeats a word or gets a quiz card right)
PRODUCT DESIGN
Game World Fiction
It’s night in a Yoruba compound. An elder is waiting for the moon to be full, the fire to be lit, and to tell a story. The stories start with a call in the Yoruba houses: “Àlọ́ o!” is called and “Ààlọ̀!” answers. Only then does the tale begin. The tale to be told in this version is the dog and the tortoise. There’s a big famine, and the animals are starving to death, and they make a terrible deal to sacrifice their own mothers. But Ajá’s love for his mother is too strong to be denied. He puts her far up in the sky where there’s still food to eat. Each day he visits his secret place and sings a special song, and his mother lowers a rope for him so he may climb up and be fed.
However, Ìjàpá notes that Ajá doesn’t ever appear hungry. He follows him, hides and learns the song. The next day he disguises his voice and sings it himself and the rope comes down again. As he is climbing, Ajá comes and sings to his mother: I am not the one on the rope. She slices it, and Ìjàpá drops to the ground. His shell breaks apart, and that’s why every tortoise’s shell looks the way it does today.
Watch a narration here.
Monetization
The vertical slice isn’t sold. It’s used for user testing. The full product makes money through business-to-business venue licensing:
Museums and cultural centres: 12-month licence per location can include the addition of stories.
Recreational centres and VR lounges: Revenue share or fee per session (as a ticket add-on).
Later: Story packs of new stories and other cultures’ folklore are sold to existing venues.
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Why venues instead of players: Very few Nigerians have a VR headset, so selling to individuals would cut out the majority of the audience. Experiences already exist and are paid for by venues which own or rent headsets. This is reflected in the design through short sessions and fast resets, a seated setup, and the small space with staff nearby.
Platform(s) and Technology
Platform: Virtual Reality, standalone headset
Target headset: Meta Quest 2
Also supported: Meta Quest 3 and Quest 3S
Input: Controllers
Play mode: No moving around the room; seated.
Engine: Unity 6.6
XR stack: OpenXR with the XR Interaction Toolkit
Build target: Android (Quest standalone), offline compatible.
Vertical slice timeline: 1 week (7 days)
First playable: Day 6
DETAILED AND GAME DESIGN SYSTEMS
The slice is a full story cycle that has been created in a one-week period. That includes all the art being created from free low-poly asset packs and Mixamo, with no custom modelling.
Day 1: Setup and Story Data: Unity 6 project with URP, OpenXR and the XR Interaction Toolkit. Seated player rig. Stories that are set up as Story Beats and Words as ScriptableObjects
Day 2: Narration. Narration and English-language subtitles over dummy audio.
Day 3: The head-bow greeting, mic call and the response, and the button fallback.
Day 4: Story world scene, smoke transition and word card moment: card appears, play repeats the word, and the card flies into the calabash.
Day 5: Calabash progression fill, MOC quiz, reset session and record data.
Day 6: Use native speaker recordings, add lighting and fire effects, test for permanence and optimize.
Day 7: Test with 3–5 people, repair any problems and make a video demo.
Assets needed
Environment: Story world with fire pit, night sky and moon, hub compound, mats and stools.
Characters: Elder, Ìjàpá, Ajá.
Props: Word calabash, rope
Visual effects: Fire, smoke transition, word glow.
Audio: Narration call, 3-word recording, night ambience, drums, short music stings.
UI: English Subtitles, prompts, word calabash, end summary
Code: Story beat and word data, narration manager, mic response detector, word card moment, repeat-after-me check, card quiz, scene transition, session reset, session logger
Objectives and Progression
The player is seated at the fire. The elder greets them and instructs them to bow their heads (to give their proper greeting). He then encourages them to grab the empty word calabash. The old man calls “Àlọ́ o!”. The player responds. The fire smoke swirls up and opens into the story world. The land is barren, and the animals are hungry. But Ajá will not agree to their terrible deal; he will hide his mother in the sky. The story halts for the first card (ajá, dog). The elder says it and the player repeats it, and the card flies into the calabash.
Ajá croaks out his song and a rope falls down from the sky. The player looks up to watch him climb to his mother’s feast. Card: ìyá, mother. Ìjàpá spies on Ajá, copies the song in a disguised voice and starts to climb. Ajá comes out and sings to his mother, who cuts the rope and Ìjàpá falls, breaking his shell. Card: Ìjàpá, tortoise. Again at the fire, the player is quizzed. The lesson of the story: Greed and trickery fall hard, and love for family is rewarded. A summary is provided to show the words learned, and the game is reset for the next visitor.
Short-term goals (explicit): respond to the call, repeat each word when the card is called.
Long-term objectives (Explicit): Fill the calabash, complete the story, make all the correct cards in the quiz.
Implicit goals: understand the lesson of the story. Be curious about hearing the next story.
How it helps the concept of the player: The player is a kid again at the fire. Each goal is an activity that a listener in a real story circle would engage in: Greet the elder, respond to the call, follow the story, recall, remember what you heard.
Interactivity
Action & Feedback: Grab the calabash and hold on to it in your hands. If the word is said again, the card glows, chimes and flies to the calabash, which then fills up a little more. When chosen, Quiz cards flash green or red.
Short-term cognitive: Listen to a new word, say a word about the person or object in front of you, and repeat the word.
Long-term cognitive: Remember the words throughout the story for a multiple-choice card quiz at the end.
Emotional: The warmth of the elder, Ìjàpá’s trickery, and the pride of saying the word aloud and watching the calabash fill.
Social: Calls and repeat words out loud. Friends who watch in the venue frequently join in.
Cultural: Proper greeting to an elder, àlọ́ ritual, and listening to the Yoruba language from a native speaker.
Moment by moment: the player listens and then moves. Pause the story at each beat until they do something (speak/repeat/choose) to be rewarded and continue. They never wait a long time without anything to do.
How the player moves: They don’t. The player remains seated, and all scenes take place in front of him/her in a comfortable semi-circle area, rather than having to turn around. The camera can never move to change scenes, only fade or go through the smoke transition. It doesn’t cause motion sickness and fits in small spaces.
Voice input: Only checks if the player’s voice is loud enough and long enough. This same check is also used to check call and response and word repeat. If you miss two shots, you are then given a button prompt, ensuring the game functions for shy players or loud establishments.
Physics: there is no physics; once the player grabs the calabash, it is in his/her lap forever and cannot be dropped or lost.
Data collected for research purposes: Session time, time taken to answer the call, number of tries per word and Quiz score. There is no personal data that is stored.
Primary UX flow
Class Diagram
