Design For Dummies III: The Setting

It always surprises me how many want-to-be designers get obsessed over their setting and story the minute they put pen to paper. I definitely don't underestimate how vital these elements are in defining and shaping a game idea, my second semester project proved how you can make an almost completely different game from the same core concept if you approach it differently in terms of narrative, presentation, setting and art direction. But, it equally proved that ultimately these aspects can often be changed without losing the “idea” itself.

For me, the trick is finding the right package in which to present your idea, the setting and story that will provide your idea the most opportunity to live up to it's potential and provide you the most breathing space as a designer. Hence for me it comes after, not long after, but after, the genre and the hook; which are the foundation and skeleton to the brick and meat of the rest. To recap...
The Genre: Platformer
The Hook: The player can move and alter the environment


Environ-Mental
Sometimes it takes a long time for me to decide on the right setting for a project, other times it is just immediately evident where I have to go from the idea itself. In this case, I only really explored three possible avenues. My first thought was that the environment would “of course” have to be organic in nature; malleable and “alive” so that it could move and change like the living levels of SoTC. I thought of a character who had control over nature, who could cause plants to sprout, trees to grow, branches to bend, roots to wrap and form bridges, flowers to blossom; all in a vast and organic world, rich in forest, vegetation and plant-life. I then thought that perhaps the character need not be limited by control of fauna, why not the power to crack and shape the earth, or to command water to become ice, fire to become a weapon?

This brought the player quite close to godlike control over the world around them, and it wasn't much of a jump from there to dropping the natural environment for a contemporary one. Shadows of Christopher Nolan's recent dreamy high-concept blockbuster Inception and reality-bending ancestor "Dark City" crept over my mind; painting pictures of a character who could wrap streets around the sky and warp the surface of buildings, re-write gravity., re-make physics.. Ultimately though, the contemporary route didn't feel right for this project. I wanted something a little more fantastical, and such godlike powers risked too ambitious and pipe-dream-esque a project to hold up as an example of genuinely good games design.

I went back to basics; ways that a character might affect the game world. An answer far more obvious can be found in a TV remote, or garage door opener. Humans can control machines from afar without need for magic or telekinesis; what if the world was mechanical, composed of various technological aspects the player had a “remote” for? Needless to say I quickly spiraled into a spider-web of sub-concepts related to this realization. The idea of a character “hacking” into parts of a mechanical environment to move, control, and organize machines for platforming was attractive, but I still liked the opportunities and atmosphere provided by my original organic world; the idea you could “grow” new environment features in a living setting. Sometimes, a compromise can lead to the best of both worlds...

But I don't want to spoil everything. Next time: I post actual work instead of pointless collections of topical images for the sake of splashing color between words. I know, about time.