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Worldbuilding project advice

A topic by tramdrey created Oct 18, 2022 Views: 238 Replies: 4
Viewing posts 1 to 3

Hi all! I would like to ask for advice about my project.

It's not a game yet (although I would like to make it into a game someday), but a worldbuilding project. I have humble gamedev experience , and no experience at all in narrative design and lore creation, since my main specialty is art. But I always liked the idea of creating my own fictional world and decided to try my luck at it. I created basic lore, made some texts and pictures by myself.

Could you give me some advice, is there any way I can use this project to find a job in gamedev? Could this experience be interesting to someone?

This world is called Exolith and it is some kind of fantasy/postap/western setting. 

https://tramdrey.itch.io/exolith

Thank you for your attention, I would appreciate any advice and comments. 

(+2)

The artwork is awesome, although there's quite a few different styles. That's not a big problem for concept art, but as you move toward a more complete world I suggest narrowing down the visual style so that its more consistent. This image really stood out to me because it's super cool, but also because it doesn't match with anything else in the document. If there were a couple of these in the same style, marking different historic periods for example, it would feel less random. You also switch between thick lines vs thin lines, different types of shading, etc. Again not a huge deal, but going forward you might want to think about which method fits best. Personally I like the sort of dusty 3D renders the most, they give off a nice steampunk-esque vibe.

As for the writing portion, it's a bit disorganized. I would consider putting a summary at the very top that explains the world from a macro point of view. Highlight the key points, and perhaps even more important what makes this world different from every other fantasy world. When I get thrown straight into early tribes, I think "here we go again, yet another fantasy world that starts with primitive tribes conquering each other." That might be fine if I'm reading a novel, but here I would have rather heard about the big concepts right off the bat. Start right away with "this is a planet with no technology where a huge derelict alien vessel crashed, disrupting society everywhere." A good design document should give readers an idea of the whole within the first page or two. Then get into the details.

The sections are a little all over the place. Here are your section headers:

  • Antiquity
  • The Exolith Era
  • Somnific Ash and New Dogma   (problem: previous sections were time-based)
  • Veils     
  • The First Nomads    (now we're jumping from an item, to a people/time period)
  • Artifacts    (back to an item)
  • Guilds
  • City    (this is about a specific city, the title should include its name)
  • Desert   (I guess this is the opposite of the city?)
  • Desert Frontiers    (this section is actually about groups of people)

If you read them like this, the direction is unclear. First we're moving through time periods, but then it switches focus to items, groups, and locations. I would try organizing the sections differently, and be more direct with each topic. For example the section "Guilds" starts with this sentence: "Centuries later, a majestic city grew up around Exolith." What? Get right to the point... this section is about the Guild Council, I shouldn't have to read an entire paragraph to find that out.

For organization, you could have time periods as your "big" header and then smaller sections in between:

  • Antiquity
    • What tribes exist?
    • Where were they concentrated and where did they move?
    • Beliefs, technology, customs?
    • What is the cimate, wildlife, etc
  • Exolith Era
    • What happened to each tribe?
    • Culture shock everywhere - how did each culture respond?
    • How was nature affected?
  • City Era
    • What new technologies are found? How did each culture respond?
    • Who is in power? Who speaks out against the new way of life?
    • Is nature recovering? Forever changed?

There's some really cool concepts in here and nice artwork. I'd like to see more "showing" of the history rather than "telling." For example you wrote "The city has seen booms and busts, witnessed the apogee of bloodshed and the triumph of peace." Okay, tell me about it. You are basically saying "this is a story with conflict in it." Great! Now flesh it out... create some historical events about specific groups of people that you have already established. Work towards populating the timeline for each group of people, and make those events have an effect on their future. It's a lot to think about for sure! But if you build it one piece at a time, you'll end up with a historybook!

Do I think this could be made into a game? Totally. But it will take a lot more work to grab the attention of a developer, as translating all this into a videogame or tabletop game is a huge undertaking. Maybe look for people who are interested in helping with the world building and narrative stuff as well, so that you aren't writing literally everything. Good luck!

(+1)

Wow thanks a lot for such a priceless feedback!

You are 100 percent right in most of the examples given.

As far as the order in which the information is presented and the way it is presented, you are absolutely right, these thoughts have been bothering me all along and I was really worried that the main feature of the setting was being presented very slowly.

About the different styles of art. This project has been in progress for a while now, and I've been using it to try my skills as an artist as well. If we were looking at it as a commercial product, then of course a single style would be necessary. But for me it is also a kind of presentation of a variety of skills. So I agree with you, but as long as the project is in this state, I won't redo all the art. Maybe it would make sense if I wanted to submit not just the setting, but a specific art direction as well.

ll your other recommendations are very helpful and I will definitely follow them in the future. Thank you very much for your attention!

(+1)

Fundamentally, what's the story?  There may be one, big, true story that no one knows, but each tribe is going to have it's own stories and legends.  Some will be true, some will be subjectively true, some will be dangerously wrong.  Many will blend truth, myth and falsehood, depending on where they came from, who was telling them, why they were telling them and how garbled they got in the retelling.  The world arises from the interaction of and conflicts between those stories. 

Your game, as it plays out in the world, is another story, one that interacts with several of the older stories and, hopefully, influences many of the current stories.

Yes, that's right. That's why at this point I decided not to just fill the lorebook with new descriptions, but to do something that would reveal the world through stories. It's hard to do it as a game yet, but it's much easier for me to do it as a comic book. I have the idea of creating several small stories on behalf of different characters. They might intersect closely, or they might intersect very distantly. A kind of novelization of the quests, as if it were an existing game.