INTRODUCTION The brief for the first half of our Year 2 Games Design project was to create the design document (GDD) for an original game design. Our blogs would then act as a digital version of such, documenting every piece of research, every frame of animation and every pencil mark made towards character, asset or environment design.
Near the beginning of the project, we were issued with a digital list of 10 short stories/texts to read and make notes on that would inform the foundation of our game ideas. However, the rule was that our games could not be simply a gamified version of the texts were had read. A few weeks later, the whole year would then vote for which story they wanted to base their game on. Any person who did not vote would be assigned a story.
THE FOUNDATION OF MY GAME'S IDEA
Out of the 10 texts, I physically read three and listened to one via audiobook. Those three were The Outsider by H.P Lovecraft, A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison. I listened to The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe via audiobook. As is the case with all of my work, I made all my notes in physical form.
All of these can be found in my ring-binder folder and on page 1 of my black sketchbook. Going back over my notes now, I remember being torn between choosing The Outsider and Ellison's text. Both had potential for good game mechanics, such as the frequent use of mirrors in Lovecraft's story, and both could bring forward interesting environment design. The Outsider also had a theme of isolation and human curiosity. However, I could not find anything substantial to work with after reading A Sound of Thunder.
To come up with initial ideas, I brainstormed on the subject of each book, starting with H. P. Lovecraft's text, coming up with such themes as 'Mirrors', 'Lost Childhood', 'Deception' and 'Light' (Found on page 2 of my black sketchbook). At some point during this session, I turned my attention to what eventually became my focus text: Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. I realised that it had the most substance to it out of the four texts (Pg. 3)
Setting to work on this, I thought about what made Ellison's story memorable or interesting, and what stood out about it, which for me was the sheer amount of body horror and graphic visceral detail of the Hell the survivors had to endure. I created a list, 27 words long, of words or concepts I associated with the work, some of which included 'Hell', 'sadism', 'radiation scars', 'illusion of time' and 'extreme temperatures.' (18/10/2018) (Pg. 3) All of these and more had the potential to become several game ideas in and of themselves.
Then I landed at the idea of 'shifting environments', as in the text the terrain the survivors find themselves surrounded by is controlled by the unforgiving mechanical God of the world, AM, whom has the power to control everything.
I went on to brainstorm more of this concept, my rough notes of which can be seen in bullet-point form below:
Shifting environments - temperature, terrain, weather - hazards - endless hazards - mix this with the theme of countdowns
Perhaps have a game where where the environment shifts under the player, or maybe the player is the controller of the environment
Maybe the environment is sick - covered in boils and blood(?)
Day and night can shift dramatically
21/10/2018 - (Still Pg.3)
Can the player control the environment?
Sickness - after effects, medicine, contaminants, quarantine, anti-bodies, symptoms
Sickness, weakened condition (?)
Human failings - maybe the human you control is unpredictable
Starvation mechanic
It was at this point in which I realised that my idea was veering dangerously close to being too similar to the text, so I had to think about dramatically altering the game's environment and had to re-think the 'survival' aspect of the of the idea to keep my concept original. However, these aspects were the most important and changing them too much would mean losing the whole idea completely.
Below are some brief game environment and mechanic sketches I made whilst trying to negotiate this thought: //Refer to Pg. 4 for quick sketches and ideation//
Here are some more brainstorm notes from my sketchbook:
(Within a wastleland-type world) Maybe the human you control is already weak and prone to falling over or starving quicker. Add that to the time of day, environment and weather being messed around with makes for a game that makes sense. (Pg. 4)
(22/10/2018) - (Still Pg.4)
Are you a sick person trying to make their way through the environment in search of medicine?
Perhaps the environment is a series of illnesses: bacteria, viruses, etc.
Different levels and stages Could it be that you're inside a body?
The body may want to fight you back, thinking you're a virus
You can't incorporate weather much into a game about illness
THE DEFINITIVE IDEA And through this extensive process of hitting ideas off of each other in written form, I eventually came up with the definitive idea I have now: that the environment surrounding you is not a hostile, shifting wastleland, but rather the sentient environment of a human body's interior.
And from this idea I formed my game's overview (Pg.5)