P2 Concept Doc
Team: Xiaohai Liu, Suyie Z., Eli Vazquez, Serena S., Yinchen Xu, and Ty Hunter
Synopsis:
From early on, we wanted to set our game in the environment of city where individual lives go on and many stories happen. We decide to go for a story in a city that explores the relationship between individual themselves and the bigger environment, the dynamics between independence and fitting-in, between loneliness and sense of belonging.
Emotions:
After our first brainstorming session, we decided on three emotions we want our game to deliver:
Invested — we want the player to feel empathetic to the protagonist and feel personally connected with the story. We don’t want our player to be merely an observer but an active participant.
From disempowerment to empowerment — we want the player to start the game with the feeling of disempowerment, with limited controls or but then gradually feel more empowered moving though the story.
From loneliness to sense of belonging — we want the player to go through an emotional journey where they feel lonely and estranged from the environment at first and then slowly build up a sense of community and belonging with the evolution of the game.
Mood boards & Playlists:
To explore the emotions we intend for the players to feel, we made mood boards and playlists to evoke such emotions with multiple senses.
Check out our carefully curated songs and playlists!
Eli: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NuZjhlNwPk
Suyie: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe8dCP2JC-oSTeGlUWZJxk3MyOE6J1V_s
Ty: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYjS1G0S6dBRWb5k41xH4WrKgM-3ieHaL
Xiaohai: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAF4q7ADflkL-xOdPlVU2GxdgDP3nB_vd
Yawen: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0CVb8BsBRXAnxJBkjnd8KU?si=8TWRhTl-S0aE9GzuiF9IYw
Yinchen: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM53OelpHhYpEP5BapAeF4ALxopjuXKfg
Brainstorming:
With the guidance of our emotions, each team member came up with three potential ideas and directions for the game. We presented ideas to the team and voted for our favorites. Below are our top choices:
“The game happens in a big city map. Each level would be a smaller map of the bigger map…The narrative could be a person’s decision to fit in or stay alone in the city environment. The player can choose to cooperate in the city or choose to work on their own.” — Xiaohai
“A traveler visits a city full of people with no facial expression. The city is “dead” and everything colorless. The player needs to talk to people, hear their stories, and help them (e.g. solving puzzles, reconnecting two people, finding people’s memory). More and more people smile and color and vitality are back. Player’s choices affect how the city finally looks like (city culture) ”— Suyie
“2D metroidvania platformer. Gain more abilities as you gain new friends. More friends = feeling of empowerment through gameplay” — Eli
“Our character wakes up in an apartment one day with no memory. She wants to find out what happened to her, so she decides to search around the apartment building and talk to people in this building to find as many clues as possible. While she is searching for clues, she also gets to know stories behind each person in the building.” — Yawen
“Top-down view. Starts out with player trying to squeeze through big crowds. Crowds start to dwindle down, creating more empty space and loneliness. Finally, crowds reintroduced at the end, but with more positive music/color, rather than the pure chaos/business at the very start.” — Ty
Top-down view with low polished, geometry style board (like the one in background of Arknights/Persona), good for showing the city as a whole — Yinchen
Synthesis
Through the discussion of our top ideas, we synthesized our ideas into directions we are going for in our game!
Colors: We will use colors to contrast feelings of loneliness and togetherness and show the progression of the game.
Zoom: We will make use of zooming to manipulate emotions. Check out this game below recommended by Eli that utilizes zoom:
Story: We like the story of a person moving from being stifled in the crowd, deciding to leave the crowd, and eventually finding their own crowd. Inspired by that, we decided to add more narratives to make the narrative more concrete.
Our game would start with the player coming to a city for the first time and needing to go back to the apartment. However, because there are too many people, it’s hard to move the character. With more and more people coming in squishing, it becomes impossible for the player to navigate. Therefore, the player needs to take an alternative route, an empty alley. Then the story unfolds as the character starts to feel lonely and powerless in this dark strange alley, in a strange and seemingly apathetic city…
Exploration:
We decided to go for a linear story, but leave room for exploring the environment in each level. The main path is limited, but each level has specific emotions to be explored. There would be objects to be found that would trigger the next level of the game.
The player can explore different places of the city which would trigger additional stories.
