Following the Story in a Story idea that we came up with, we had a group discussion in the common room regarding our current idea. Kerris pointed out that she was more interested in the story of the fish and seemed to lose connection between the story of the fish and the actual player. We all have been very attached to this idea but all these issues were telling us that the foundation of the idea is not solid enough to carry forward so with a heavy heart we put the idea in the bin and took a step back for a moment. However, we loved bits of the idea and we decided to take those forward.
We wanted aspects of the life under and over the ocean for our idea and show a community that learns to understand each other through communication. We looked into lots of cooperative games like Brothers: A tale of two sons, Ibb and Obb, and Book of travels to get some inspiration. We wanted the game to be a single player experience but you get to play two characters that are a part of a completely different society. Looking back at Kerris' concept art, it reminded me of a game that I have recently been playing called The Gardens Between in which you play different levels which represent different parts of the player's life. The thing that sparked an idea in my head was how the world in that game revolves around an island. After having a discussion with my team mates on having an island where you get to communicate with different people, more ideas sparked in our heads about having a collaborative experience where life under the oceans have to work with land dwellers to solve puzzles.
We further iterated that idea into having an island that turns upside down due to the greed of the land dwellers. So now the people who live underwater have an environment that the land dwellers lived in and the land dwellers live in an environment that the underwater life used to live in. We wanted the gameplay to be about communicating with the other side of the island to figure out why the island turned upside down.
Gameplay
We wanted the game to be a single player experience where you get to control one character in each side of the island. For that I wanted to have two cameras set to each character you can play as. When the player wishes to switch from one character to the other one, the camera transitions smoothly between the two and changes to the other one. The core mechanic of the game would be communication, working in harmony with the other world and solving puzzles through the knowledge you gain through understanding the other side.
The Player would eventually uncover the narrative through gameplay unveiling questions about why the island turned upside down and what caused it. We tested our idea by talking to people on our course and some people outside of the course to get a different perspective. Abbie's brother gave us a valuable feedback by questioning us about the motivations of these characters in game about wanting to find out about the other side. His criticism was very valuable as we have not put our thought into that aspect of our game idea. We later on discussed this issue and figured out a way of dealing with it by taking out the player from the story and letting the story tells itself through the characters in game. So instead of us already knowing what the characters are doing, the characters find out about these things by exploring the environment, finding different ways to communicate and finding out about the other side.
For Character Designs and Narrative design of the game, Check out Abbie's Blog.
Prototypes
We ended up making multiple prototypes for this idea so we could test our different aspects of it like, visualization, narrative and camera movement.
First Prototype
Abbie demonstrated the communication mechanic in her first prototype in the most basic form. It shows how the "working together" aspect of the game would work and how the characters might interact with each other.
Second Prototype
The second prototype is a physical prototype where we glued toilet rolls together in the shape the shape of the desired island. The prototype shows how the stuff might be sent over to the other side of the island. For example, the characters in the game might put a letter in a bottle and send it to the other side of the island through a network of sewage systems. It also showcases how the gravity of the game might work. The idea is that the gravity underwater is also upside down so things will float up to the surface if thrown down into the ocean. So with the prototype we can flip the whole thing around to show how the things might be communicated and transported to the other side.