Monday’s lecture was all about reflecting on our ideas and what we want to convey to the player. We started with some exercises in which we identified how and why we are making our games.

Behaviours & Experience:

[I would like the players to…]

Experience a feeling of uncanniness.
Experience life from the point of view of a starlet or performer in the 50s & the dangers that come with it.
Escape to a world with big dreams, fame, & stardom.

Extract the Experience:

How does it relate to a human experience? A feeling? A memory?

Many people have a desire for greater things which I centred my game around. I want the players to feel that desperation for fame and success when it’s the only way out of a bad situation. Through the game, players will learn how much it takes to attain that fame that they crave and the price they’ll have to pay. I also wanted to include references to the way western media portrays Hollywood’s attitudes to beauty being the end all, be all of a woman’s career.

Mapping Out:

I want the player to feel apprehension and pensiveness.

For the final exercise, we looked at the different play structures and where our games would belong in relation to the essential experience we want players to have (e.g. competitive, luck-based, role-playing, etc.). After this, we took the chance to think about the aesthetics, story, technology, and mechanics of our games.

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Concept Art

Thursday’s lecture was the chance for us to meet illustrator and graphic designer: JAKeDetonator. His talk was engaging and gave us a fresh take on character design. He gave us pointers on how to make our characters more compelling, believable, and likeable. For example, when creating our characters, we should reference real life; taking elements from people we know, music, film etc.

After the lecture, he advised us to think about the traits for our characters as well as the character’s needs and wants.