“Super Rescue Princess” is the game I designed to support my bachelor’s thesis on Ludonarrative Dissonance.
It was created to gauge player behavior when faced with a potential ludonarrative dissonance through the player’s own gameplay.
The player plays as a princess that must save her beloved knight, who has been kidnapped by monsters. She is introduced as a pacifist in a short cutscene, laying the foundation of the idea that killing conflicts with the princess’ morality.
While the game is designed to be a 2-D platformer, it has the unique twist of adding weapons to the game that allow the player to retaliate to enemies. The player can not only kill enemies but friendly NPCs too!
It is designed to be a 2-D platformer, but has the unique twist of adding weapons to the game that allow the player to eliminate enemies and even friendly NPCs.
Players accumulate points for everything they kill. Enemies give 100 points while friendly NPCs “award” the player with 1,000 points up to a certain total amount of points possible.
This point system serves as an indicator to what and how much the player has killed. Players should be aware that using weapons conflicts with the given story, leading to a Ludonarrative Dissonance created by the player themself.
The game link was distributed through multiple channels on social media to guarantee a large enough sample size for the experiment. Players were then given a short survey to be filled out after playing.
Made using Unity and Aseprite.
“Super Rescue Princess” can still be played here: