2330

Analogue Game Design – Draft – Project Three (2330)

| johnson.7643

Game Design Document Draft

 

Instruction

Create a draft of the game design document.

 

Purpose

Practice using the outline for the final submission. Get a style and basis of what to write down. Understand what each section means.

 

My Interpretation

I decided to theme my game design document to reflect the look of my whole game. It is grungy and dirty and faded and sharp. The theme rings through the document, not only making it more interesting to read, but committing to the Romanesque style that was originally the inspiration for this project.

Analogue Game Design – Various Card Types – Project Three (2330)

| johnson.7643

Instruction

Create visuals for your game design concept.

 

Purpose

Allow others to view and understand your concept more thoroughly through visual aids and guides.

 

My Interpretation

These are the bulk of the game, the cards. These will be drawn and have various effects and change the dynamic of the game. Item cards (the golden one) can be collected and kept to ward off harmful check cards (the red one). Most cards are event cards (the gray one), simply giving you an option of two choices, the net difference being the same. Some of these event cards are positive, but most are not.

Analogue Gift Design – Stat Cards – Project Three (2330)

| johnson.7643

Instruction

Create visuals for your game design concept.

 

Purpose

Allow others to view and understand your concept more thoroughly through visual aids and guides.

 

My Interpretation

I decided to start my visuals by creating my stats card first. The game will focus on resource management and balancing these stats to stay alive in-game. If any reticle (not pictured in the current stats card designs) reaches zero, the game ends. Each stats card is a different character, all of them boasting different advantages and disadvantages.

Analogue Game Design – Concept Sketches – Project Three (2330)

| johnson.7643

Instruction

Begin concept drafts for your final game design concept. Highlight mechanics and how the game may be laid out.

 

Purpose

Start the organization and storytelling of your game design. Communicate clearly what and how the game will take place and how it deals with conflict, goals, and mechanics.

 

My Interpretation

I want the game to take place over seven days, if you successfully survive to the end of the seven days you win. You lose the game if any of your four stats (health, sanity, reputation, will) reach zero. Stats are determined by which stat card/character you pick at the start of the game. Each stats card has a unique advantage and disadvantage. Stats increase and decrease when you pick up event, check, and item cards from a shuffled deck. On day one you would pick up one card and react accordingly. On day two you will pick two and react accordingly after each card. On day three you pick up three cards, and so on until you pick seven cards on the seventh day. Event cards are the majority of the shuffled deck where you pick cards from, in these cards, a particular event happens and you are given two options which differently impact stats, overall having the same net gain/loss. You may also pull check and item cards, though these are much more rare. Check cards are designed to check a particular stat, and if it fails, you suffer the consequences. However, if you are lucky enough to have an item card saved, you may use it to reverse the negative effects of a bad check card or amplify the positive effects of a good check card. The game heavily emphasizes fate and moral decisions regarding survival. Once the character is selected and the deck is shuffled, the game is already set in terms of story, but your choices on which options to pick on the event cards is the meat of the game, alongside resource management of stats and items and the risk-reward system that comes with keeping cards for saving you later or using them now for a potentially less effective play.

Research and Reflection – Analogue Game Design – Project Three (2330)

| johnson.7643

Original Story From Project Two

Horror Story  – Final Version

 

Abstract Takeaways

  • divine punishment
  • hunger
    • insatiable
    • insanity-inducing
    • murderous
      • only relieved by consumption of human flesh
  • moral conflict
    • eat oneself?
      • hurts
      • can kill you
      • still hungry
    • eat another?
      • murder is wrong
      • dangerous, damages reputation and psyche
      • full, not hungry anymore
  • coming to terms with terrible outcomes

 

Themes

  • divine intervention, fate, and unfairness
  • moral conflict, murder is wrong, is sacrifice any better?
    • can you call it “murder” if it’s to survive?
  • madness, insanity, slowly succumbing to temptation, the pull of evil becoming stronger every moment

 

Potential Message

  • there is no right answer in desperate times
  • survival is a test of morality, not fitness

 

How Interaction and Play Can Communicate the Message

The themes of succumbing to an ever-present creeping madness definitely can be a conflict within the game design, the goal being to simply make it to the end, whatever that means (time-based? challenge-based? experience-based?). The machinic of the game would likely be something to do with surviving each day to the end, but facing various effects of the hunger each day. Perhaps this is a card game, the goal to last a week long with this ever-growing hunger within you. Maybe each day you draw an additional card that has the chance of serious setbacks upon them each day, drawing one on day one and seven on day seven. I would like this game to be played alone, if possible, a game between yourself and fate and random chance. The concept of keeping up facades, reputation, and not being creepy could play into the game design as well, perhaps including a player card that has a series of stats (health, reputation, suspicious, hunger) that change as you draw cards, and as one gets too low, you must react accordingly and potentially hurt other stats.

Narrative Style – Final (Story) – Project Two (2330)

| johnson.7643

     ​I know hunger more than you ever could. I have been “gifted” with a curse from what some call God, though I clearly see her in a different light. She decided one day to punish me for reasons I am uncertain. I simply woke up and I was hungry. Not hungry in a peckish kind of way, not hungry in a discomforting kind of way, not hungry in starving kind of way. Hungry in a kind of way that is reminiscent of having a hole where your stomach would be and your body desperately trying to tell you something is wrong the only way it knows how. Pain. Indescribable, unrelenting pain. I thought I could simply eat, and the problem would be solved, just a cruel joke my body was pulling on itself. I was wrong. I ate and ate and ate but I was still hungry, I had to eat more, I had to eat something, I had to eat someone.

     I don’t remember the first time I tasted human meat very well. I remember it was my own arm, out of sheer desperation to alleviate the pain I took a heaping chunk of it off. To my surprise it was filling. It alleviated the pain and I felt a moment of serendipitous relief as the blood trickled from my teeth down my arm and onto the once clean wooden planks below. I thought that was it, but I could feel the urge deep down, dormant. I realized that this hunger will not go away after such a small snack and my body can only hold so much flesh. 

     I was not a murderer. I was not a cannibal. I will not kill, I will not eat, this is a test that I can overcome, I told myself. Other people will not suffer because of my ailment and I will not be the cause of pain and destruction in others when I have felt such pain myself. I can overcome this. I can overcome this.

However, the hunger remained unwavering. It grew and grew with such force that it drove me mad. The pain was hardly bearable, and to have the solution be right in front of me at all times, just out of reach, was torture. What do morals matter when you’re desperate? It’s survival. I was hungry and I must survive. I stormed outside and made my way to the neighbors plot.

     My first full meal was alive when I had them, albeit not for long. It started with their thigh, if I remember correctly. I strapped them to a chair and made sure their leg was secure and sunk my teeth into the side of the leg. I suppose I must’ve hit an important artery because they fortunately bled out only a few minutes later. Good for them. What came next disgusted even me, selective memory has blocked it out. The point is, I had no leftovers and a big mess to clean, but I wasn’t hungry. I had a feast.

Narrative Style – Draft – Project Two (2330)

| johnson.7643

Instruction

Bring a draft of your progress to class.

 

Purpose

Allow for critique from other classmates and see how well the story is coming along with minimal verbal aid. Check if the style is consistent and emphasizes the tone of the story chosen.

 

My Interpretation

Presenting my project to other classmates revealed some confusion and critique that was extremely helpful. Obviously, the lack of color is currently the largest issue but that will change in the future. I plan to use a mixture of pen and faded colored pencil to allow for a contrast between stark dark colors (black and red) and muted, aged colors both of which reflect different eras of Romanesque art. Some miscommunication and confusion in character differentiation was brought to my attention through the critique and further efforts to change the character designs for more clarity is happening. Finally, frame eight was a place of confusion for the viewers of my storyboard, so I plan to make the frame smaller, add a border, and change the figures pose to emphasize the distraught feeling floating through the scene.

Narrative Style – Storyboard – Project Two (2330)

| johnson.7643

Instruction

Create a storyboard with 6-10 frames as a draft and template for your final.

 

Purpose

Find the best way to convey the theme and feel of your story. Experiment with different compositional shots.

 

My Interpretation

I decided to focus on composition rather than style for this step. I explored closeups, extreme closeups, mid shots, and more wide shots as well as canted angles, over the shoulder, and playing with Fibonacci spirals and golden ratios. I plan to play with changing the frames within the frame, as setting the frames themselves ajar is not an option. I expect to do this by zooming in and out with the composition as a whole, framing the empty space with black.