Welcome back!

To give myself a better knowledge of game design and development, I purchased “Introduction to Game Development”, edited by Steve Rabin. It’s a huge book attempting to cover all aspects of game development, from story and character to programming methods. Each chapter is written by a different industry veteran; a great way to structure a book I thought. A handful of different perspectives and areas of expertise are much preferred (at least for such a broad book) over one man’s ideas on making a game.

I’m learning a lot, especially on the topic of “natural funativity” — the different types of fun people have whilst playing games and why — and the structure of games (pacing, difficulty, building a consistent world etc.) However, despite having a fairly comprehensive section on writing for video games (they even use LeChuck of Monkey Island fame to illustrate a point), I feel I still want more on this particular subject. Adventure games are made or broken by their stories and character’s so I want to know as much as I can about successfully constructing these elements. I think the next stop for me will be Steve Ince’s “Writing for Video Games”. It sounds perfect for what I’m after.

It’s like a dream come true sitting down and conceptualising this game and it has really made me appreciate the importance of setting realistic goals. Within the first 5 minutes we said goodbye to a 3rd person perspective and any chance of 3D graphics or complex sprite animation. It’s all about playing on your strengths and doing what you really enjoy. For us, that’s illustration and story writing. Lucky we’re not making a platformer!

1st VS 3rd

The choice to play from a first person perspective was an odd one for me. When it boils down to it, third person means pixel art and 2D animation – skills which take years to acquire. Here are a few of my quick attempts at pixel art:

Quite basic indeed! As much as I love this type of 2D artwork, I’m not taking a year or two out to perfect the skill. Hand-drawn art prevails, for this project at least!

Up until recently, there has always been something off-putting to me about playing in a first person perspective. I think this originates from movement in first person shooters. It has always felt very mechanic and awkward to me. I appreciate that first person controls have improved since DOOM, but I still sometimes get the feeling that I’m looking through a camera, mounted to a stand with wheels. It was actually the adventure game Post Mortem that made me realize just how effective a first person viewpoint could be. Not the world’s best adventure by any means, but the dreary atmosphere was developed convincingly through first person exploration.

However, I like games that show your playable character in third person during cutscenes. I think it’s important to display his/her reactions to a variety of scenes or moments. It helps people understand what type of person they are, which is good if you’re going for a character-driven game.

As promised, here are a few sketches and illustrations! Please take note that these images do not represent our upcoming games art-style nor are they part of the game in any way. I just thought it’d be cool to share some of my previous artwork. Enjoy!