Somebody Had to Do It
Document Type
Abstract
Publication Date
Spring 5-1-2025
Abstract
The video game industry has expanded rapidly over the past several decades and has recently been subdivided into two main categories of games: those produced by AAA studios with hundreds if not thousands of developers, and those produced by small teams of indie developers working on passion projects. Somebody Had to Do It is an example of the latter category, iterating on the fantasy adventure genre as a 2D, top-down, singleplayer role-playing game. For those unfamiliar, that means it utilizes a third-person bird’s eye view and follows the story of a protagonist that the player directly controls. The game’s protagonist starts off as a humble shopkeeper in a medieval town that the prophesized hero is passing through when they are humiliatingly slain fighting local raiders. The player takes up the fallen adventurer’s arms to defend their town and ends up swept into the story to defend the entire kingdom like the hero was originally supposed to. Like many indie developer games, Somebody Had to Do It is focused less on mechanically demanding combat or skill expression and more on the characters and narrative. The game features a turn-based combat system and an emphasis on player choices and decisions that drive the story, utilizing features such as variable dialogue that changes to reflect past actions. Another key component of the game is that the progression system is based around the protagonist’s skills related to their profession before the story rather than their combat prowess.
Recommended Citation
Wurman, Tucker `25, "Somebody Had to Do It" (2025). Student Research. 244, Scholarly and Creative Work from DePauw University.
https://scholarship.depauw.edu/studentresearchother/244
Comments
Completed as part of the Computer Science Senior Capstone Project.