Shawshank Redemption The Game

By Max Cassella and Axel Barredo

Intro

For our project, we decided to remediate the prison break scene from the 1994 film, Shawshank Redemption. Our game is fairly simple overall, but it took some time to obtain our final product. We knew we wanted to stick to the prison break scene, but we were unsure as to how we could portray our vision in a fun way while sticking to the same tone as the movie. Given our wanting to accurately match the seriousness of the scene, we began our quest with the vision of creating an escape room like game that would be playable in virtual reality. Our vision was bold; however, we felt it could be done. After researching how to make a VR game, we realized that our vision may have been too bold to accomplish in such a short duration. We shifted our focus to create a more simplistic remediation as our second goal was to have a completed game that we were passionate about rather than pieces of a much more complicated game that would leave us unfulfilled and struggling to explain its meaning. After watching the trailer for a game based off of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, we decided to shift our focus to a platform game developed in Game Maker Studio. To address our concerns regarding matching the tone of the film, we decided that it was best to develop our new game, and then determine how to remediate the serious nature of the film after we had a better understanding of what our final product would look like. 

(The beginning stages of building our level)

Gameplay

For those who have never watched Shawshank, the main character Andy Dufresne escapes Shawshank prison by digging a hole in the side of his cell, climbing through the inside of the prison, and crawling through sewage pipes to a small river a few hundred yards away from the prison. In our remediation, our hand drawn sprite representing Dufresne jumps from platform to platform in order to reach the end of the level; however, unlike the movie, the objective is to avoid the sewage that is spread across the level. If a player were to fall in, they are guided back to the start of the level and given another attempt to successfully escape Shawshank. 

Why Remediate Shawshank?

Our choice to remediate Shawshank Redemption stems from a few different factors. Firstly, the film is one of our favorites, thus the opportunity to remediate the film was a project that both of us welcomed and were engaged with from the start. Additionally, we felt that the film offered us a unique challenge: creating a game from a film that offered minimal opportunity for remediation. In other words, the film’s serious tone and ambiance was an obstacle we recognized could be difficult to overcome in an elementary game. 

Combatting Issues of Tone in Remediation

To combat issues of remediating the overall serious nature of the film, we decided to go the complete opposite direction of our original goals of matching tones and instead opted to create a game that focused on the humorous aspects of the scene. Inspiration came mostly from Axel’s remembering of a Shawshank remediation from Family Guy which focuses on the humor associated with the scene such as the fact that Dufresne appears in the river on the other side of the prison walls “clean” despite crawling through hundreds of yards of human waste. Upon rewatching the scene from the original movie, we found humor in the fact that this was not entirely untrue as Dufresne’s character does appear from the pipe in a relatively clean state when considering the journey he had just endured. To replicate this mistake in our game, we offer players unlimited chances to complete the level; the sewage is merely an obstacle and players will not die if they accidentally fall in; however, they will experience a much more difficult journey as they will certainly find themselves continuing to encounter the sewage until they reach their destination. This realization in our process led to a much sillier game mechanic; however, our result adequately portrays that the sewage is merely an obstacle rather than a barricade for our player similar to how Dufresne experienced the sewage. In other words, we did not create a game that was meant to be too easy; however, we also felt that if our game was too difficult, players would get frustrated and lose sight of the end message of perseverance.

Visuals

Axel was the main designer for the visual aspects of the game. The only sprite in the game was designed by hand in Game Maker Studio. All other visual aspects of the game were taken from the public domain. The visuals for this project became exceedingly important as we moved further into the development process. Because we decided to create a satirizing game for a serious film, it was very important that our visuals sufficiently matched the seriousness of the film. For our trailer we chose to continue with our satirical view of the scene as we incorporated serious scenes from the movie and matched them alongside our goofy gameplay. To add to the satirical nature of our game, Axel included fake quotes and other allusions to the comedy within our game which helped close out our satirical goals. 

Challenges and What Did We Learn

While it would be easy to spend this section talking about the difficulty of learning to code since neither of us are coders, we faced many other challenges throughout our development process. For us, the most difficult part of this project was getting our views aligned with each other as to what we wanted our final result to look like. In the beginning we had trouble settling on an idea as many of our initial ideas did not interest us, were not unique, or were too difficult to complete with such limited time and game development skills. We realized early on that creating a world from scratch was very difficult as is, but the added difficulty of remediating a classic film brought an entirely new set of challenges along with it. This aspect made the brainstorming process the most difficult process of our development as once we settled on a concrete idea and learned the skills to execute, our vision began to come together very quickly. 

Conclusion

While this project was a daunting challenge at the beginning, we had a great time creating a game that both of us can be proud of. Given more time, we would have loved to add more levels as well as a scoring system; however, we are happy with the result and are now equipped with new skills regarding game creation. We have also developed an extreme appreciation for game developers and are impressed with the creativity that goes into creating even the most minute details of a game. While our players should not expect our game to be topping the charts as game of the year, we hope to provide our players with an experience that challenges their ideas of the classic film and pushes them past obstacles they perceive as impossible barriers just as Andy Dufresne did when escaping Shawshank. 

Video Games: Making Fools of Us All

A video game’s first job is to fool its players. We have talked at length about how games have their rules and procedures for players to follow. What we have not discussed is how these rules can differ completely from our reality, yet we are made to believe these rules are real and important. In my fiction writing class we learned the same thing, just in a different medium: the more a fiction deviates from reality, the more novel truths the creator must convince their audience to accept. A world unique from ours still needs to be a sensible one. If the creators fail to make us believe in their world, the game fails, but if it succeeds…well, we as players get to enjoy a whole new reality.

Few games have been as exemplary of this as Thomas Was Alone. Upon starting, the rules of this world are simple: you are a red rectangle by the name of Thomas, moving up and to the right to reach the next level. That is the core game structure; you take control of various rectangles and get them from one side of the screen to the other, dodging obstacles along the way. This world is easy enough to accept, but the creator, Mike Bithell, throws in an extra rule: these rectangles are self-aware with their own personalities.

Thomas Was Alone Trailer

On the surface, these rectangles differ by no more than their color, shape, and jumping ability, but through these differences the creator spins a story in which these attributes shape how the characters interact with the world and each other. In this long journey from one side of the screen to the other, they learn what makes them unique, what their life purpose is, and even how to love one another. Yes, that’s right. One of Bithell’s rules is that these rectangles can fall in love, thus we see a short, cynical square named Chris fall deeply in love with the thin, horizontal Laura who lets him jump higher than ever.

Chris (bottom left) and Laura (upper right) getting ever closer

The craziest thing about this? It works! Bithell convinces us that rectangles are ready and willing to take on these human attributes through brilliant storytelling and character development. Of course, this could have all been much easier with humans, or maybe even some talking animals, anthropomorphizing familiar objects to bring the rules that much closer to reality, but no. In this world we are taught to invest in and empathize with shapes.

Claire (bottom) saving John (left) and Thomas (right) in proper superhero fashion

Now why does it matter that we believe in rectangles that eventually sacrifice themselves to offer others their freedom? Bithell had a perfectly fine game full of problem-solving and coordination, so why don’t the rules stop there? To answer my own question with another, what’s the point of moving a rectangle across a screen? This is not Tetris or Mahjong, other rectangle-based games with high scores as the goal. In fact, there is no quantitative value for actions beyond making it to the next level (and collecting the occasional floating square for an achievement). The value lies within the story. With each level, you learn a little more about the world you are jumping around in, and the partners you are jumping around with. If Bithell failed to make you believe there is value in this, you likely would not be playing.

By tricking us into believing that this two-dimensional world is one with a rich history and dynamic characters, Bithell leaves you with values to bring back into this mundane world. He teaches you what it means to be a friend. He teaches you the value in serving a higher purpose. And more relevant than ever, he teaches you that we are never truly alone. With lessons like these, who cares that you had to be tricked to learn them?