Before I dove deeper into this project, I needed to think about the theme and where this project is going to head. In this project, I want to explore and take character design to new levels and go further out of my comfort zone.
I started to think about my game theme in more depth and began to generate a variety of ideas; in this project, it became apparent to me that I wanted to explore the horror genre in more detail and make ideas surrounding that topic.
Ideas & Explanation
For my first idea, I looked thought about making a game about fairies but instead of making it cute and pleasant, I added a twist; The player wants a wish to be granted, to have this wish granted they must complete a ritual involving a fairy circle. However, this fairy circle leads the player into a perilous world. Everything wants to kill you here. The player can still have their wish granted, but they must get to the “end” of the world.
I also thought about making a relaxing adventure point and click game about an environment clean up robot venturing the planet after the extinction of humans. The player is the robot and they have awoken after years of being out of service. Your job is to now look around the area and click on objects, when you click on those objects, you are able to look at the memories associated with that object. This game explores the fragility of human life and what it means to be a human; the good and the bad.
My third idea was to make a co-op mystery puzzle game. You and a friend are trying to solve a masquerade murder mystery case that went cold after 10 years. The twist is, you and your friend are experiencing two different time periods. One person is there at the masquerade and telling player 2 the information that is happening at the moment and player 2 is the detective 10 years after the incident. By using the clues and your surroundings, you and your friend can solve this case.
I also thought about my fourth idea after watching Sweeney Todd. I took great inspiration from this movie. In this pitch, I thought about creating a game where the player owns a bakery. Everyone in town loves your meals, because of this, your business has become successful and you have good relations with the towns people. But you have a secret, the most important ingredient for your cuisine is human flesh. In this game, your job is to maintain your restaurant, you need to clean up surfaces, make sure you’re nice to your workers or else they’ll snoop around in your office and at night, you need to kill at least one person ready for the next day’s menu.
My last idea is similar to my first idea in the sense where it misleads the player. It’s set in a circus and you start off as a homeless pickpocket trying to get by. That all changes when you pickpocket a strange man; he notices that you pickpocketed him but he’s willing to look past it as as long as you join his circus. Reluctantly you join, it isn’t that bad, you get fed 3 meals a day and you now have a place to stay, but you’ll soon wish that you didn’t join this circus at all. Everything went well for the first week or so, but then during one of the acts, it fails and your tent mate is now left in a gorey state. All you can do is stare in horror. As the player you are venturing this RPG adventure game with mini games. You go around interacting with your tent mates and play mini games at the end of the day to survive the night.
Mini Peer Feedback
I shared these ideas with a couple of my peers to help me decide which idea to develop further into a game. I asked them for very loose and quick feedback as I may change the overall concept of that specific idea later on. I was already biased to begin with and chose 3 ideas for my peers to choose which one they liked the most.
As we can see, the circus idea was favoured more than the bakery and island ideas. I somewhat knew this idea was going to be quite popular as I also think that this idea could be developed into a more sophisticated idea.
(Some of the feedback I received)
After careful consideration and thinking about where I want this project to go (and not just having the peer reviews tell me what I want to do), I have come to the conclusion that I do want to go with the circus idea. The peer reviews did help and almost validified how I felt about making this game, even if another idea had more votes, I think I would have asked more in depth why certain peers have chosen that idea and incorporate it with the circus idea. One of the main reasons why I’m biased towards this idea is because I know that I would have so much fun coming up with the overall aesthetic and character designs. One thing I do want to keep in mind when I make this genre of game is how to enhance the experience for the player.
Developing the idea
(These ideas are quite messily placed and some of them don’t necessarily link together)
Key points I’m sure I want to add:
The player is homeless / poor and struggling to get by, this becomes the motivation for the storyline, without this important detail, the player cannot progress onto the main story.
The person that recruits you is someone from the circus if the character is jovial and high spirited, the character will want to join this circus, this person is the window to the actual game.
The game will utilise cute aesthetics and (mostly) jovial characters, by using bright and round shapes to depict this game alongside with happy characters, it creates this illusion that everything is alright and that there are no underlying themes.
The player must do minigames at the end of each day to complete their act, one of the game’s gameplay mechanics that I want to include.
Once the player settles into their environment and gets used to their routine, something bad happens; one of their tentmates’ acts end in an accident. This is the part of the storyline where the player uncovers the real gameplay.
There is a friendship system of sorts; when you become closer to a tentmate, they can reveal pieces of information to you, consequently unlocking objects in game or better yet; a new room. This is another one of the mechanics I want implemented into the game. I think that making the player interact with the NPCs make them feel more human and fleshed out as characters. It also encourages them to explore the map more.