Game Jam Collab- Week 3

14:52 BA2b , Collaboration 0 Comments

This week was focused on designing our main character, working on assets, a general unified artistic direction, getting more mechanics working and assets in game as well as designing monsters, traps and obstacles.


With ideas being thrown around of having our forest being slowly consumed by machinery and man's industrialisation, and a team mate liking the idea of some kind of choking hazard, like air pollution, I started doodling some gas masks. I thought maybe our character could have one too, alongside a gas mask being a trap.


The gasser would choke the player, slowing them down, the screen zooming in.

The storyboard above was me playing with composition, this would have been more potent if I drew it in the side-scroller setting we'll be using, also I'm banned from the soft brush. Collborating with others has alreadt been quite enlightening, my team mate in charge of assets paints on 100% opacity whereas I'm lower, causing a lot of my work to seem washed out, so I've started t adopt this habit, and also with feedback, poured a little more time into my concepts. So I iterated this gas creature-



Playing with the idea of a mechanised tree, flower and botfly, I submitted these to the group. This idea of a gasser was liked, but the original idea of having the gasmask alone on a tree was preferred- also I learned I need'nt have spent the time I did on these, once the idea is cleanly there, move on.

So I sketched some more monster/ trap ideas, playing with the idea of some kind of pseudo-sprite, something that pretended to be a collectible using a fake sprite collectible to eat the playey, and something that the player would think to jump over, but would kill them, shocking them the first time.



The two silhouettes on the bottom row were the most well recieved, so I shall flesh them out and experiment ASAP.

We've been gradually steering away from the forest fire idea, being what you're running from, and more onto mechanised landscapes, polluted monsters and a generally darker tone. We'd like there to be a sort of dark twist, perhaps the sprites eating the player at the end. Ideas of encoding some riddles and other oddities into the level and menu screen for the sake of ambiguity, our whole game we want players to feel there's something amiss, something meta. I had one fevered debate with a team mate about "attracting the sprites", there needing to be a fundamental, mechanical and visual reason these strays are following the player. I argued there needn't be, they are collectibles, why add so much complexity where there needn't be, players making contact with the sprite by touching them and have them follow. My team mate would not be reasoned with and was a tad psychotic in the demands of there being a bell or something to win the trust of the spirits. So in my designs for the character, I tried to incorporate bells.


Playing with the idea above of something that shot up and killed you, I thought of some kind of plant, but zombified, polluted or mechanised versions were preferred Animation wise, we've been talking about a fluid style for the main character, drawn frame by frame in photoshop, but joltier animation for the lesser parts in Spriter, to get a more mechanical feel in motion for the monsters and traps.

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Moving onto the main character, I drew some quick mask designs and quite liked a cone shaped character whose feather ruffle could sprout wings, my group didn't but liked the masks, preferred a simplistic oval design, but did like the cone head idea. A bell perhaps jingling around the neck.


I drew out some more character concepts, the more simplistic masks being liked. However, the character direction we ended up going with was far less obscure than the direction I was taking it. So I took my team mates iterations, and synthesised the parts I felt went well together.


I had the idea of the mask rotating to show emotions, but that wasn't very well received. The idea of there being some kind of ring or halo behind our character, it acting as a "savior" to these creatures, is one that has persisted. We liked the shin guards, feather ruffles and chest plate, so continued down that direction.

I'm quickly learning to not get too attached to ideas when working in a group, its all about bringing as many good ideas to the table as possible and being ready for all of them to be dismissed, which is new to me, but I'm adapting to it and the benifits of working in a collaborative manner are far outweighing the minor niggles.

A final character shall be decided on very soon as we're almost there with it, I need to design some more hazards and monsters and level design needs to be attacked. I've also been in contact with a man who wants to collaborate with our group and create our music, we should have some further correspondence next week!

Games Jam Collab - Week 2

15:39 BA2b , Collaboration 0 Comments

So, by the end of week 2 we very much have our idea nailed. We're making a continuous runner, not endless as there are end points, that focuses around man's destruction of the natural world, with monsters and spirits both playable and present. The one button mechanic being used as a tap to jump, hold to glide and double tap to dash/evade/roll, there could even be option to change the dash/evade/roll to other things with unlockables.

Many ideas have been thrown around about what our character should be and look like, at this point we're unsure exactly what our character will be, but we've all agreed on some kind of masked humanoid, the mask itself ideally being wooden and rounded, so our character seems cute and appealing. Ideas about levels, like the polar ice caps melting, rivers rising, forests burning, trudging through a blackened cess pits have been thrown around alongside the idea of alternative routes in levels, giving the game some replay value- a bio luminescent cave with mushrooms under lush green forests was like by all. As a style guide, the rendering of Ori and the Blind Forest alongside Rayman Legends has been a key point of reference.



Parallaxing, layers moving over one another to give the illusion of depth, is definetly something we want to implement in our game. As characters go, I created a few silhouettes...


The one above was the one we all seemed to like, a mask and headpiece that can be swapped and interchanged giving the character different power ups, yet a gap is left for the face that could house two glowing eyes. I followed this up with some shape iteration.



Having loosely played with this idea, having either a spindly character or a small one with a large hat seemed appealing to myself, the hat perhaps housing a bird that could be used for flight- a brief look into Aztec cultures also gave me an idea for a totem pole mechanic, followers piling on top of your head opposed to running behind you. Looking into the Aztec deity Quetzacoatl, the idea of a shapeshifting creature, both serpent and bird, seemed novel, it dashing as a serpent but flying like a bird when needed.


These ideas were throw about, however we all agreed we wanted our character to be more complex.
Below was a rough doodle for an almost pied piper-like character.


What our group liked were a team mates design, where her characters had layers and hats and cloth that could become moth wings among others things, having looked at Turkish and Mongolian clothing and head peices. The spindly, simplistic legs of my sketches were not what we wanted for our character, a much more human frame with kneecaps and feed we felt would look better in a flowing animation, our character more humanoid than strange insect.

Some further loose sketches of a running character. At this point we started to loose focus as we hadn;t been together whilst concepting, so we met up to discuss what we want our key themes and aesthetics to be. The idea of making our character some form of animalistic shrine guardian in a heavily Nipponese setting was pushed by one member, but the majority felt lush pinks of sakura blossoms in a serene forest isn't what we originally wanted or set out to do. We want our game to have a message, to be beautiful yes, but also have some stark contrasting elements.

Our programmer wanted some assets to use as place holders in the prototype currently, so I whipped some up.


We spent a lot of time gathering a plethora of images on Pinterest, and started to look at more haunting areas, gnarly trees and beautiful oaks. Deforestation and trees ablaze seemed to be a recurrence, we thought a tutorial level could look pretty, but when thrusted into the game, trees are charred black, smoke hangs in the air and the forest is dying as you're rescuing small sprites, perhaps the spirits of dead trees.

We wanted our character to be a forest dweller, like a protector of the woods, we all agreed we want our character to have quite a tribal aesthetic, so I sketched a few masks.


The more rounded ones seem the way to go, so after, still with no actual character in mind, I created a few concept pieces.


Perhaps some form of triangular spirits could move in flocks across our forest?





We started talking about industrial segments, pipes and rust to juxtapose the lush green world we want to create, probing the forest and tearing it down, the underground segment no longer bio-luminescent, but gritty and filled with machinery and pipes. Glowing mushrooms, could instead, be radioactive. We had the idea of each level representing a culture or lore, the woods segment could look into Japanese nature spirits or Aztec Totems for example. We looked into giving our character bird like features, and even thought about making our character a faun, but decided against it as we don't want to an already existing creature, but rather make our own.

Before we start mapping out and sketching the flow of our levels, we want to create aesthetics, concepts and assets an be led by our visuals, than plan out and visualise, we'll do it vice versa with the components we make.

Sound wise, I'm asking an out of uni contact to collaborate with us to create our soundtrack. We're wanting something ambient and vaguely melancholic to go with the theme of a forest and its destruction. Having tribal drums as our character's leitmotif and maybe even clanking metal to show the alien element in the natural world. Sound effects we ourselves would like to produce!

We also drew out our plan for how we want to use the rest of our time on this project:

Week 1: Concepts, Assets, Programming
Week 2: Concepts, Level Design, building environment and a definite character
Week 3: Model and character sheets for main character, sprites and enemies- animation on walk/run cycle begin for main character
Week 4: Finishing animations, adding sound effects, compiling all, should have a working game by then with a single level with two paths, collectibles and obstacles with hand painted assets

Week 5/6: Polishing, dealing with problems that surface during development

We have a plan of action for the rest of the project, a project leader who's assigning us tasks and managing the workflow of each member. Having spoken with my group, I've been told to focus less on getting things out as quick and as rough as I have been, and to spend a bit more time rendering and creating quality for our game, which I agree with. We're concepting obstacles and assets, enemies and environments currently, to start work on implementing in the game soon. Here's to a good week!

Games Jam Collab- Week 1

06:58 BA2b , Collaboration 0 Comments

Having finished the collaboration with graphic design, which was a lot of fun and very rewarding, my next challenge is also a collaboration. Working with fellow Games Art Students to create a game on the theme of "One Button", preferably as a mechanic, but could this also be an aesthetic thing? Could the main character be made of patchwork, having a single button eye?

Not much was done this week as our group of three became a four due to various circumstances and other issues affecting our team members. However, we've all each been doing research into one button games in general and on the IOS store.

From playing and researching the games Ten Billion Wives and Get Bigger! Mola, the cookie-clicker addiction of having to use minimal effort to achieve a lot alongside physical clicking to hold engagement whilst acquiring more currency, prolongs entertainment by constantly surprising players through unlockables and a sense that the next reward is just around the corner. Within Mola Mola, a flappybird-like game, the player navigates an ocean avoiding big fish and eating little ones, getting bigger to eat these bigger fish and take on other creatures. The game constantly engages the player by giving them missions in this already addictive playloop, the addition of unlockable buddy items that give small rewards like extra speed and new characters with specialised abilities and control types keeps the player coming back for more, finding new ways to play.

The list that follows are a few ideas for this games jam, already one button could have many uses: holding, double tapping, pressing and not pressing could all be inputs!

-Karma Boomerang, with timing press the button to release a boomerange that richochets off moving obstacles, with an overarching narrative on Karma.

-8 Forbidden Virtues, an idea from a team mate where things like Manipulation or Trickery, represented by masks could be used to solve puzzles, holding the button and dragging being a mechanic to change the use of that button.

-Blind man's Bluff mechanic, holding the button keeps your character still

-Collecting and finding monsters by tapping objects and holding them down to add them to a bestiary

-As a theatre critic you have trap doors on stage, a well timed press will get rid of a poor actor

-Flute- exploring a 2D maze like cave, you must collect monster by putting them to sleep with your flute, activated by holding a button down. Your AOE expands and the time it takes to put an enemy to sleep dwindles as you upgrade, an example being a dragon who needs ten seconds of continuous AOE but your scope is quite small, having to be next to them for your flute to work, but being that close means death. Risk reward system

-Control the ghost, a zombie and the skeleton of a dead man, holding, double pressing and simply pressing changes control over which character, use all 3 to solve puzzles.

- A virus where the aim is to get bigger, button causes mitosis, get too big and white blood cells can find you easier

-Balloon fighter mechanics, keep pressing to flap and land on different islands where you can make money by selling maps through rhythm action games.

A mechanic that uses one button I was really fond of is the bubble gun in Cave Story, where holding down the button creates a shield of floating bubbles that slowly attack enemies and releasing the button unleashes a barrage, using something like this could be great.

As a united group, we sat and pitched ideas and eventually found we all had very similar interests and could agree what we wanted the core of our game to be.

-We all love monsters and creatures, they will be in our game
-An infinite runner(ish) with a following parade of sprites
-Upgrades, costumes and different characters
-IOS
- Levels like Rayman or Bit.Trip Runner that aren't infinite, but have a length and various challenges
-A meaningful game, with something to say

Many notes were made alongside loose scribbles designing our base concepts for narrative, features and much more. We're currently working on the game flow, an early prototype, concepts for the vision of our game and a 2D hubworld is richly desired.We played with the idea of what makes a monster and the ethics behind that as our driving force, but soon switched to the ruination of the world by man, and growing to realise the world is not a beautiful place. This reflects a mechanic idea where the player's character grows and is always running, trying to escape its fate or discover somewhere that is still a safe haven.

A loose idea of having a strange scratchy aesthetic between stages and loading screens of a small narrator questioning the player, much like in the game Memento Mori.




Having also played Depict1, Aether, Babies Dream of Dead Worlds and Coil, an art game is what we'd like to produce I feel. However a large influence has been Ori and the Blind Forest, so a game that's perhaps mechanically very simple but visually stunning is what I feel we're aiming for.

Despite a rocky start, I'm confident about this project and am eager to crack on. It's gonna be tough, but I'm looking forward to learning a lot and collaborating with my team.

Research Report Proposal- Beginnings

15:24 BA2b , Research 0 Comments

So from here on out, I'm to start considering what to do for my 5000/10,000 word research report and look into what sources are available to me for that and to choose whether I want my report to take the form of an extended essay, an industry report, a technical report or any other such form. I'm currently most drawn to the idea of an extended essay and I've a few ideas already:

How is Western Culture interpreted within Japanese Games?- For this im interested in how Christianic lore and religion is often used and interpreted within Eastern games. Examples being the gruesome yet contextually accurate angels with the Bayonetta franchise, a hierachy of angels and reapers within The World Ends With You and even the pure concept and aesthetics of healers and clerics within RPGs. Benediction, Revival and healing all big features in these games, angels and devils are often called upon as imagery for anime characters as well.

The Culture of Monsters- Again with Japanese games and moreover culture, monsters and creatures are a huge part of Japan. With links to Japan's rich cultural history of yokai, these cultural monsters and the fondness for them influence the amount of mascots used in Japanese advertising, games like  Pokemon alongside many popular RPG titles having mascot monsters, such as the slime in Dragon Quest, merchandise for this critter being plentiful- a game called yokai watch from Nintendo is a new IP thats being released worldwide, pegged to be the next Pokemon, as the Western Disney IP Spectrobes attempted- why did this fail to match up? Looking at these links and exploring the attachment we have to virtual creatures, the historical context that influenced this and why we as people are so invested in the imaginary identities of beasts.

LGBT and Representation in Games-  As the industry ages, it begins to accept and represent the wider community of players from different walks of life, how are they being presented, how has it developed and what needs to be overcome? Th representation of women in games is developing from pure objectification, yet its still a large staple, as are stereotypes of minorities. The game series Fire Emblem in their latest installment allows the player to be gay, but only with a single character in game, and lesbian and gay relations being exclusive to the two sister title. Homosexuals are not Pokemon! This should not be exclusive, and why could this not have been opened out to all characters with the potential of being bi or pansexual? Why is it in the game a gay couple cant have children, a large mechanic of the game (aside from biological reasons) despite the game world featuring werewolves, dark magic and interdimensional world travel? Is the concept of a gay couple with children more mind-boggling than a polymorphing dragonic protagonist?! And less said about the gay conversion therapy story arch within the game the better....

Meta- Continuing my last essay into a wider research report on engagement with players, something I've been strongly suggested to consider. However, I'll take what I've done and add to my next idea, the one I want to go forward with...

The Theatricality of Games: How Games Invoke Catharsis, Employ Escapism and Promote Emotional Growth- The drama student in me is immortal. I've been a preacher of theatricality within games for an age (no one listens to me) so what better way to get my point across than 5000 well cited words? Games have always meant a lot to me in the stories they've weaved, the worlds I've visited, the characters I've met, and the emotions I've felt. I believe anything that can move or inspire an individual, employ catharsis, is something to be cherished. C. JoyBell C. a writer, once wrote:

"How do you know if something is real? That's easy. Does it change you? Does it form you? Does it give you wings? Does it give you roots? Does it make you look back at a month ago and say, "I am a whole different person now"? If yes, then it's real. The evidence of truth and reality, lies in how much something can touch you, can change you, even if it's from very far away."

I'll of course have to look into the source of this quote more, understand more about JoyBell first. But this is the thing, I can quite happily list countless times a game has made me cry, has touched my heart, has influenced my perception, has in no hyperbolic sense- changed me. I'm certain I'm not alone. I'd gather primary research through google docs, play some games I've been meaning to like The Cat Lady, FireWatch and others as well as explore meta more- how is a game directly contacting us to make us feel something?

A focus and look at a variety of theatre practitioners I'm aware of due to prior studies would also be beneficial, as well as seeing some theatre as well to link it all in with quotes and so the breadth of my research is as  wide as it is deep.

As a suggestion, I was tasked to look into online sources as well as the library I have at my disposal. I've found a variety of articles and books I could read and look into, the previously cited Aarseth's "Cybertext" will be something I'd like to read cover to cover over Summer alongside all and any theatre practitioner manifestos and essays.

Games are often dismissed as a medium, and there's a whole essay already arguing against my point, dismissing games as lacking the dramatic power to move a player. I wholeheartedly disagree.

Using gamestudies.org, Selmer Bringsjord writes that games cannot be dramatically compelling as to be so, game characters must be autonomous, they must highly complex AI. Disregarding this entirely with the fact that this essay was written nearly two decades ago, and much has advanced in that time, writers creating stories and strong, believable, relatable characters for players to connect to. Going through all her points, it was easy to argue that writer facilitates all of this- i also realised that as narrative and characters are important to drama, and games being highly interactive by nature, true moments of unique drama shine in games through choices. Branching paths with characters reacting in turn, as in my last essay, the morality and ethics of these decisions being the crux of the drama within games.

Another article introduced me to the technique of critiquing narratives via Polti Ratios, something I'll have to practice and analyse the games I'll be looking at with, categories for these ratios consisting of Levels of Drama, Variety of Drama and Involvement of Drama.

Using the Library, I found a book called "Masks: Faces of Culture" which I feel would make a wonderful comparison for theatre and games. Masks allow you to become someone else, much can be said for any play avatar created for any game- you don a persona of your own making. A Digra call for papers spoke about this very topic, about how players traverse virtual environments as a character and how this can aid learning and emotional development.

Looking through Jstor, I found a collection on Avatars and within games how ludology and narrative can help and hinder each other. I also found sources on the nature of catharsis and a book on how theatre educates, linking this to how games promote emotional growth.

I feel I have a lot to go on with this idea for my research report, but I'll see how I can refine it in the months to come.