The Beginnings

When we were given the design brief for this project we were absolutely sure about only one thing - the fact that we did not want space exploration to imply "space" in its traditional sense. After much deliberation and a few try outs of a strategy game, we decided to flip the coin once again to see if a new "third side" would reveal itself. We mutually picked the current concept for the following reasons:

• It was refreshing
• It was simple
• There was, not just a strong, but a very fascinating narrative that painted a beautiful picture of what and where the game would eventually traverse

My partner in crime - @jareddragus - began to create a verbal sketch of the narrative. In a nutshell the narrative talks about a young girl who has forgotten everything about herself and her surroundings. As she wallows in her own thoughts, she traverses through different rooms in an attempt to evade the Greek goddess Maniae who could potentially drive the protagonist insane. 

This narrative is not just instantly captivating but was also very relevant to both of us. This very clearly had the quality to motivate us to explore newer areas of the narrative, the space in which this narrative ensues and the very nature of our protagonist as well. 

Once this sketch was ready, I began to start creating a very rudimentary game play run in GameMaker Studio. This run focused on developing the movement of the player character and the how she would interact with other objects in the room where the game starts. As the narrative grew I began to add more functional layers to the protagonist character's movement and activity and interactivity in the space. I also went on ahead to add sound and variance in speed and structures. 

Here are some screen shots of what we created in GMS...

The brown square represents the protagonist, the blue boxes represent tables and the purple boxes represent cupboards...

The protagonist crouches and hides under a table (hence the transparency)...

The protagonist has found a letter!!!

In the next update (which should take place in the next two or three days) we will have some exciting art work, story boards and visual sketches of the narrative. We would also like to share a higher fidelity version of the above rudimentary and skeletal prototype.

Thanks for reading our blog today and have a nice day!