One of the most interesting aspects of To Our Health: A City of Harmony and Havoc is the notion of 'The Trait' that affects the player's home city. Caused by an unknown force, its effects have suddenly changed the lives of 25% of the city's population.
'The Traits' are a narrative device used to suspend disbelief for the players as they move into building and interacting in their speculative future world. Drawing on similar tropes in science fiction and magical realism, it is a storytelling device for the players to latch on to.
These Traits were largely inspired by an earlier design experiment called 'Futuri-Tea House Workshop'. Whilst at the time, were based on puns to became different 'teas' such as 'Fros-Tea' these were reintroduced into To Our Health in the form of Traits where one is randomly selected at the start of the game.
For To Our Health, I created 12 different Traits, based on several thought experiments and 'what if?' scenarios that I have had going on in mind in the background whilst developing this project. Some are based on more fantastical changes to our lives, others are based on very real challenges people face. What was important was to have a range of Traits that affected different dimensions of health and wellbeing to sit within the framework I designed.
For example, Awoken is based on the premise of not needing to sleep, and based on my own understanding of the body, I designed consequences of this such as cognitive efficiency being reduced and taking longer to heal as the body is no longer resting to heal whilst asleep. What would that do to work? relationships? education?
Another is Empath which is becomes an extreme version of people being able to exhibit empathy, however with no way of controlling it. Torment, in particular is based on Nightmare Disorder or Dream Anxiety Disorder but also amplified.
With each of these Traits, I have also categorised them within my framework as suggestions for how to start thinking about how it affects peoples lives. I found that applying these Traits created a more exciting experience in the game and gave players something to think around as they began building a future world, whilst bringing in my reading into Speculative and Critical Design.