Jane Doe

Jane Doe is a psychological thriller that sees you—the sole witness to a body disposal—interact with disheveled residents of a run-down and neglected reserve to uncover the truth behind Jane Doe's murder. The inhabitants exhibit a spirit-like aura. This is an allusion to the notion that one cannot be truly dead until forgotten; many Canadians acknowledge the existence of Indigenous victims of MMIWG2S+, but most remain nameless, hence the lack of identity among the residents of this fictional reserve. This creates a limbo state between dead and remembered that even the victim of the game is not immune to, with the name "Jane Doe" being the legal representation of a nameless, female murder victim. This phenomenon can be observed in the engineering of the reserve; all houses are directed towards one well in the middle that reflects the names of popular victims of MMIWG2S+, signifying the residents' yearning for recognition. When conversing with the inhabitants, it can be observed that they speak their native tongue of Cree. The language is part of the reason why the main villain of the story derives his motivation. The final scene of the story has you confronting the killer, the embodiment of Canada itself. His Canadian colours and blinding white skin, coupled with the use of a church as the final destination, make it clear that you are going through the same journey that the original Jane Doe did—a forced indoctrination and eventual disposal. This cycle has inflated to such a massive scale that Canada doesn't even remember its victims anymore.

I came up with the idea for the project immediately after hearing about the details of the project. Having made several games in the past, the process was very familiar to me and connected to my goal of being a game developer. The project was heavily inspired by the game Iron Lung because I wanted to adopt its oppressive atmosphere. This game was made with Unity as the engine and Visual Studio Code as the integrated development environment. I created a document where I outlined the plot and the symbolism that I would later incorporate. The project took the entire week to complete, featuring nearly 500 lines of meticulously optimized code and over 100 individual game objects. All 3D models except the church were hand-made, and textures and audio were formatted for the game through GIMP and Audacity. All assets used for the game were either created by me, or obtained through royalty-free sources.