Collaboration StrategiesTo manage the team, as well as collaborators, I used the following programs/ systems:
Artist Statement (it's long so click the "Read More" to see it)Some background information about me: I’m only 19. Most of my gaming life has been based around Call of Duty and first person shoot-em up games as a whole, I've only recently been discovering more emotion and design based games such as Dark Souls, Shadow of the Colossus, Journey and other games of this type. Atl & Ollin is a game based on the journey of a cheeky pair of Aztec ghosts and their struggle to survive after breaking an angry God’s shrine. The game had to incorporate trust as an experience the players would go through, as well as drawing inspiration from a mechanic, visual and an audio prompt. The prompts I chose gave birth to a smooth and calming, yet hostile environment- a God like Aztec desert. This is something I really liked in the planning phase due to the possibility of all the jaw dropping scenes I could create – however time proved to be a problem for this as I was not only the designer, but also the project manager, creative lead and 3D artist. The visual prompt was a painting by an artist who was a key player in the beginning of the surrealism movement, this and the simplicity of the painting really drew me towards the calmness and visual appeal of the simple,otherworldly characters. When I was thinking of how the game would play out, I was imagining the duo sprinting across this huge barren land looking for salvation from the Gods. Turns out it's hard to make walking fun, so I had to decrease the size of the world and focus more on the cheekiness between the players' interactions with both each other and the world. The audio prompt was a song which incorporated acoustic guitar in the opening verse, to me the guitar had a Spanish theme in the way it sounded and I really want to build off that. This is where the Aztec style emerged from. The only problem was making the game not look like Journey. I wanted it to feel like it, but not look like it. It was somewhat hard to get the game to avoid that path, yet another reason I scaled the world down from a large desert to a 'small-ish' desert with a bunch of stuff in it to really push the Aztec theme in the players face. The mechanic prompt I chose was the word 'praising', and you guess it – that's where the praising comes from! The reason I chose this was due to the fact that it opened up the possibility of bringing these God like deities into the game and also a protagonist and antagonist – these being the shrines and the fog respectively. The fog was a cool concept in my head; limiting the player’s freedom and creating urgency to further emphasize the trust in the different shrines, however the visual side of it proved to be a pain and in the end it turned out well, but not to the extent we were hoping for. Something I wanted to convey in the game is the cheekiness between the player’s and their interactions with the world and themselves. Since it took a huge chunk of production to get the systems in place, we had very little polish time. Not having this time meant not having unique things in certain areas which would showcase this bond. Through play testing I was able to see that players didn't need this to be showcased since they played as if they were looking for trouble; I really liked this about the game. The trust in the game was designed to come from the physical appearance of the shrines. Some would keep you safe while others would waste your time and allow the fog to catch you. Having the trustworthy shrine speak to you just as the fog began was meant to concrete the appearance in your mind. This shrine then went silent for the rest of the game as the other shrines would taunt you into praising them. For the ending I wanted a fork in the road in which your trust would be tested. The shrine you have learnt to trust tells you to jump down a hole that looks dangerous, whereas the others would tell you to keep going and lead you to a dead end, the twist is that the hole would be an escape and not death. Once again due to time I was unable to finish the area and it turned out that all shrines would direct you down the same hole, no matter which you chose to follow. The game was designed to create a bond between players and setup the world in such a way that your interactions with the fog would be somewhat comical. The shrines were intended to be a ‘parent figure’ to the players and guide you as journey through the desert attempting to escape the demon you have brought upon yourself by being playful in a sacred zone.
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What is this BLOG about?This is basically my thoughts and whatnot as I improve as a Developer. Archives
June 2017
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