Mountain Tiger is a first-person 3D obstacle game built around a traditional setting: the journey to the state examination. The player is a pig who has to follow the mountain road upward in order to sit it.
The road does not cooperate
The path is not kind. Obstacles block it at intervals, the ground gives way, and tigers appear out of the trees to threaten the traveller. The pig is frightened — that is the honest starting condition — and still has to get through the obstacles and past the tigers, because the exam is at the top and there is no second date.
What the journey actually is
This is not really a story about an examination. It is about facing something you are afraid of and continuing through it, which is why the road only goes up and why the tigers are not optional. You cannot route around the fear in this game. You can only keep climbing while it is happening.
The message I wanted the player to come away with is simple enough to say in one line: even when fear is standing in the road, you have to find the courage to go forward.
Why a pig
Because a hero would have ruined it. The climb means nothing if the character was always going to make it.