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!