Hey, so I guess this is a devlog?

I'll update this when I have something more concrete. 

Goal: Make a game, I haven't done one of those before.

Current Status: Pre-Production && Research 

Inspirations:  Kelsey Beckett,  Finding Chika by Mitch Albom, Angela He & Angela Carter are my visual and narrative inspirations for this project. 

Idea: 

You step into the shoes of an old veteran. 

You live alone, in a small cabin the woods. You have lived there for a long time. It's been like this, for far longer than you can remember. When did you stop remembering things?

When did time stop?

Gameplay: 

Untitled Winter Game by .elm is an interactive narrative story about two strangers who cross paths one winter morning.

Tools: 

Unity 2019, Maya 2019, Adobe Photoshop CC 2020, Discourse, Sheer Naivety 

About me: 

My name is Elm. Or atleast, that's what I go by online these days. I'm a 3D Real-time/VR artist for an Architectural Visualisation company, however I primarily do boring things and only use Unreal Engine. 

Before that, I was a freelance 2D asset artist and self-employed illustrator doing commissions for browser based games and personal portraiture. 

The whole purpose of this jam for me is to dip into Unity a little and widen my skills. How far I'll get, I have no idea, but I'm definitely going to learn a lot. 

Day 1 

25/01/2020 

I went out for a birthday celebration today, but before that I grabbed a notebook and opened up all the resources an idiot could find. Made a nice little list for myself, too. Wrote a ToDo List of what I think I might need. Started, bullet-pointing some ideas... for an idea. I only found out about this jam on Friday.

Figured out some endings I might want for the game and installed Unity. I had it before, but let's start fresh, ey?

The pinteresting was the most important part. I'm a very visual person, so collecting a group of things that inspire me for this project, and using it to shape what this idea could be is the first stage. 

I also collected and read some things I thought might inspire me. 

If you're curious, you can see the board here. (opens in new tab) 

Day 2 

26/01/2020 

The day's not over, but I'll edit this if I must. I did a lot of research today. It's exciting, but I also expanded quite a bit on my brainstorming. Organised my pinterest boards a bit more and moved into getting a stronger feeling for what I want. I must say it's fun, but I'm not wasting time I swear. Nailing this part is important to me. 

I'm not quite done with the story, I ran into some commitments, but I expanded on the ideas a bit. Moving away from my bullet pointed list, and breaking it down into script format. (Once that's done I'll skip happily into laying out the scenes in Unity, with my best friend Discourse.) 

Because this is a short story/game that's heavily narrative based, I'm adopting Todorov's theory. The man might be crazy, but his breakup of equilibrium and disequilibrium is quite straightforward, and a good way for me to avoid creating something that's ambitious and all over the place in terms of narrative structure. You have peaceful life -> You find problem -> Decide to fix problem -> You reach end. How nice!

Unfortunately, because other people in my life exist, I can't stick around to finish the script, so I've dedicated the rest of my time to watching and making notes on Unity tutorials while I'm away from my precious sanctuary. 

The most important thing here is that the project is looking clearer, and watching over tutorials and researching concepts is helping me figure out what scope is more than I can chew.

Not an update, but for one of the characters (called Feral for now), I'm trying to pick a name.

If anyone comes across this and wants to vote, let me know! Link is below!

https://linkto.run/p/E1V6KOXJ