In the first week, I was involved in crafting the starting draft of our game concept. Creating a brand new concept from scratch is not easy. I tried to think about the game concept through different approaches, such as from mechanisms or background stories. In the beginning, I have a thought that I want fishing to exist in the game, which does not mean I can fish, but any fishing elements (eg. Angler NPC). So, we ended up having a related pseudo project name “Project Fish Pond”. I suggested we using FigJam for brainstorming and noting stuff in a Discord Channel. I am happy about making good use of discord sub-channels to categorize the messages.
I was using a random game theme generator for ideas, and there were a few game stories I like. Keywords are a parallel universe, playing the same level twice but having distinct feelings.
The game can tell the story by introducing a normal look and it gets deeper and the world looks weird after we know some deep trauma or story behind the character, which is presented by using two diff textures and assets for the same level. So, the world has two sides, bright and dark. or it is parallel as the character has the ability to experience the event twice. Then the story can be like: In a post-war, high-tech, low-life village, you, the player, are controlling a lumberjack robot, your daily job is to collect wood from the forest. As the game progress, one day you found no one picks up your wood storage and you have no place to put your wood, so you must go to find the manager. During the exploration in the forest area, you discovered some discarded torn family photos and stuffed unopened mailboxes. The player may think there is murder because of these sketchy evidence pieces. At our ending scene, your wood storage is cleaned up and your manager shows up. However, your manager looks a bit unnatural. Players may find there are bolts and screws on the manager’s joints, so they may think the manager is replaced with a robot one. However, it turns out the manager broke his arm and replaced one… then the game reaches the end, plays the credit scene….. AND, a photo shows after the credit scene, where the manager is holding a bleeding arm in the monitoring room. So, this game story has multiple layers.
We ended up with the rogue-like 10 seconds room idea, it has a smaller doable scope and a quicker play style. I drew some cutie balls with eyes and limbos as our character and some scene looks. The reason is to make our modelling and rigging simple, and I like cute fish roe.