In our team we decided on creating a 3D, third person, puzzle/platformer with a stylised aesthetic. The game would consist of a series of towers/areas where the player must progress upwards in order to escape. As a 2D specialist I was tasked with the concept art and began work on a simple piece to show the setting of the game. I decided to put each tower on a floating island which would be connected to another floating island by a long bridge. I chose this because it effectively gives the game a limitless scope, being high up in the sky and being able to see all the other potential levels would make the player feel as if they have a huge world to explore and traverse.
I was inspired by this sort of design from the game Furi, a game that mostly consists of challenging boss fights which are connected through walking sections where you witness a larger abstract world around you but cannot interact with. While this sounds like a negative it is actually a clever misdirection. The game is focused on its one on one combat boss fights and uses these down times in between them to deliver narrative and thus makes the game more streamlined and focused. This is what I wanted to implement into our game by containing all the gameplay and puzzle solving within the towers and allow players to take in the world in between these instances.
I then began work on the general architecture design. I wanted to give the rest of my team a rough idea of what the shape and colours of the walls would be. My initial painting was inspired by a mixture of Mediterranean and middle-eastern architecture however the rest of my team wanted some Aztec and Mayan styling to it. I decided to incorporate both into the designs, keeping the general shape I had already and adding patterns and symbols from both Aztec and Mayan temples to create a blend of different styles. It still needs a little bit more work but I feel this will be a unique and interesting design philosophy.
After this I helped out in defining our core mechanics and game design. We settled on the core mechanic being moving blocks and other shapes to solve puzzles. We streamlined this from our previous build of having several different mechanics for different puzzles as this would be too complex and more importantly more difficult to implement. With the moving blocks mechanic it is far more versatile and can be used in a variety of ways and in different configurations. We brainstormed concepts such as moving staircases together, making bridges, circular mazes and so on.
I then began work on the character design. Human anatomy is not my strongest area so I made this task into an exercise to improve in this area by creating a skeletal shape and muscle sketch for the characters stance. After this I proceeded to designing the clothing of the character. I wanted the character to have an ancient Greek style with some modern and sci-fi elements. Prominently the chlamy (Greek cloak) and hood being the key features of the character alongside a mechanical arm. In addition to this I have him breaches and boots emulating a medieval adventurer. At this point I still want to implement more into the design such as a futuristic eye piece and a face mask as well as fine tuning the primary colours but I feel it is going in the right direction.
We also began our Trello board, outlining tasks that needed to be completed for the rest of the project which will be updated throughout.
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