Previously I have been told by my tutors that I, as a character artists, I shouldn't be focusing too much on the actual plot or chosen gameplay of the 'game' that I am making my characters for and should be focusing on the actual design elements instead. The plot should essentially just be a very briefly stated and then moved on from because if we spend too much time working on it we lose track of what is really important and that is the actual art work. But although in my design document and learning agreement I stated that the premise of my project is that I will be solely focusing on making a group of characters that are expressive and have a strong use of colour, I have felt like right from that start that I needed to give my designs a bit of a back bone and purpose in a sense. I didn't want to just have a group of candy characters with no real premise to them so I thought coming up with a type of gameplay would allow me to give my designs a little more direction. I chose to focus on making my characters for a 3D fighting game where they would be chosen by the player to fight against one another, similar to that of 'Super Smash Bros' or 'Tekken', and that would be it but, however, now that I have actually drawn my characters out I just can't picture them in this type of game at all or even fighting each other.
Not having a particular plot or gameplay style for my characters wasn't a huge issue that I needed to worry about but I didn't just want to leave this gap empty as otherwise my characters would end up a little purposeless. I decided to have a bit of a brain storm about what the game could be about if it wasn't going to be about them fighting each other. After having a bit of a think about it I was finally able to come up with a plot that I liked which was:
A alien race with a insatiable appetite lands on a sugar based planet, just outside of the town of pick and mix, and immediately begin to consume and gorge on its delicious tasting environment as well as kidnapping a handful of the residents to snack on later. It is up to a brave and mixed group of sweeties to band together, despite their differences, and fight back against these gluttonous aliens and save their town.
I thought with this plot I could delve into a genre that was something more like a 3D action adventure game where my characters run around and explore areas, help residents, make weapons, collect items ect and would be fighting a common enemy instead of each other. So as far as game play style goes I would say it would be kind of similar to that of either the upcoming video game 'Indivisible', the 2015 Lego video game 'Jurassic World' or the 2014 role playing video game 'Dragon Age Inquisition' and the reason for this is because in all of these games the player is able to explore the world around them and, in some way, are able to switch which character there are playing as. I have popped a few visual examples and you tube videos of gameplay of these three video games down below just to give an idea of what I am talking about.
Indivisible
Lego Jurassic World
Dragon age Inquistion
So essentially, similar to that in 'Dragon Age Inquisition', one character will be manipulated by the player whilst the others follow along behind and, if the player wants, they can switch to another character in the group and play as them instead. I feel that this would allow the player to get to know each of the characters a little better and possibly even feel more connected to them. I also think this type of gameplay would really allow the characters personalities and interactions to be a lot stronger and a a lot more expressive than if they were simply fighting one another. It would enable the playable characters to be able to to interact and talk with one another during the game and this will allow their personalities to bounce of each other which is what I really want. I want my candy characters to be able to interact with each other and bond.
I feel lot more confident in my concept now that I have tweaked the gameplay a little as, to me, it makes a more sense than it did before and I can now visually picture characters in this style of game which is good. I think it was important for my to clarify, even if it was just to myself, what game my characters would feature in as I feel it just makes my idea stronger. So now that I have done this I can keep pushing forward with my project and get some more design work done.
No comments:
Post a Comment