Since the last section, I had a general direction that I will make a walking simulator that contains some degree of narrative that happens in the space, recently I have dug greatly into this direction.
Some change occurs and makes this game different a little bit from the concept last week.
I was thinking about how do I create a very immersive feeling, in such an environment of cosmos. First I was thinking that I will attempt building a first-person walking simulator experience, but it comes to a question that will players still focus on the environment passing by or they will just looking at the interior of the space cabin? Players will have quite different focus points in such a game, and when they are focusing on the interior of this game instead of outside, then it should be a failure to me on the aspect that players should look more at the view outside.
I’d like players to feel empty in space, feel the loneliness in the travel from Mars back home. And I was thinking about the possible manifestations approaching it. And I changed the concept a little bit to a 2.5D angle locked game, where players can only feel and see one side of the interior of the cabin while leaving another empty. I will list the reason I do it below.
- I want to create a feeling of loneliness. In 2.5D vision angle, I will make the player able to drag the view further until they can not see themselves in the space, and by doing so I create a feeling that humanity is no more than ephemera to the atmosphere, a single drop of water to the aqua.
- It will be more evident for players to grab narratives as the 2.5D locked angle is more holographic to first view and things on the UI layer will be easier to catch.
- It will take less time to produce and modeling thus reducing the amount of time on basic assets creation, and I can focus on making this game better by looking and play.
Some sketch of storyboard
You are an astronaut in the universe, the gameplay is to let the player immersed in the environment of the universe, feel the loneliness and beauty of a cosmos environment.
In the very first scene or some flashback maybe, the protagonist experiences the goodbye ceremony for him in his basement on Mars. He is a labor for the construction of Mars-Earth traffic and ends his 10-year shift at the beginning of Flora. It is a common event that co-workers send the predecessor onto the space cabin and showing gratitude for his contribution.
Outside Mars, he thinks, it still feels like a dream that he went all the way to the end of his shift, from his prime of life to an old man, and the best part of his life is contributed to such grand duty.
He always stares at the only none-electrical thing in his cabin, it is the photo of his wife Flora, well-preserved and without dust.
