P2 Concept Doc

Published in

Game Design Fundamentals

8 min readMay 9, 2020

Team: Alyssa Romanos, Darrith Phan, Michelle Wan, Gabe Saldivar, PhilipRonnie Quiambao, and Tiffany Manuel

Synopsis

The game is a collection of puzzles that, when solved, help to unfold the history behind an underground, industrial city.

Our primary silent protagonist, Nea, is a citizen of this underground city. After spending the last 30 years going through his monotonous day-to-day life, he wonders if there’s more to this dull city. One day, as he walks sluggishly towards his office, he spots some unusual object near a restricted area. He approaches the object with curiosity and discovers that it’s some “plant” named Poppy.

Poppy floats off towards the abandoned part of the city, Nea, overwhelmed with curiosity, following closely behind it. After traveling a decent ways away from the city, Nea is faced with a [whatever mechanism to move up, like an elevator or something]. Poppy floats upwards and, again, Nea follows.

Nea finds himself in an area with what seems to be remnants of the “Old City.” Nea heard about the remnants of the “Old City,” but didn’t realize that the city itself was directly built on top. After exploring the remains, he soon learns that the “Old City” was inhabited by previous generations that collapsed due to conflict. Given that the conflict was unresolvable, the city was abandoned and a “New City” was born. Through ancient relics and historic transcripts, Nea comes to the realization that the conception of his city is not what it seems, and through the help of a flower guide “Poppy,” he continues his journey upward.

Stories

The game will contain 9 levels apart from the initial industrial city area. Each level will be laid on top of each other, allowing the player to ascend as they proceed with the story.

Each level will reveal ruins of prior underground cities as well as bits of history that led to the descent of the current industrial city and its failures. These stories will be loosely themed on each circle of Hell in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno (limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence, fraud, treachery).

Tone

We want to simulate the feelings people experience when going on an adventure, the thrill that comes with exploring the unknown and the suspense of journeying towards some unidentified destination. We plan to achieve this by focusing on three core feelings:

Whimsical. The contrast between the underground, industrial world the character has known, and the otherworldly expectation of what awaits him sets him on his quest. Playing as Nea, this off-beat adventurer, we want players to be immersed in the experience of deviating from the norm and acting contrary to everyone else in his world. We hope that players will solve puzzles as Nea, inducing feelings of playfulness and wonder as he goes about his journey.

Mysterious. We want this game to feel like the player is piecing together a bigger picture as the game progresses. There’s this sense of curiosity the main character has that he can’t seem to overcome — he knows that the evidence of nature is strange, and he needs to get to the bottom, or rather the top, of it. We want the player to feel as invested in the ascent as our main character is.

Discovery. We want to use the game’s environment and gameplay to reveal the backstory of the main character and the world that they live in . To uncover new information about different elements within the game, the user will interact with NPCs, items, and stage components while completing puzzles relevant to the game’s storyline. Through this method of play, the user will experience the world as told through the eyes of the game’s protagonist.

Audience

This game is for people looking for a new puzzle platformer experience with a compelling story.

Most 2d platformers are filled with action and adventure, but we want players to slow down and take a look at their surrounding environments to be immersed in the world and invest themselves in the history that took place there.

Setting

The game is set in the far future, where the player starts in an underground industrial city area beneath the post-apocalyptic surface. We wanted to choose this environment to have a contrast to the more naturalistic setting of the abandoned cave network above the city, which will be where the majority of the game takes place.

An abandoned cave network above the underground, industrial city.

The majority of the game will take place in an abandoned cave network above the industrial city. We want this area to aesthetically change as the player continues to ascend. For instance, at the bottom of this cave it will include bits of machinery from the city, but as the player goes up nature will become more common.

Gameplay

Our core gameplay revolves around exploration of a 2d world while completing puzzles to traverse the underground levels and unlocking the history hidden there.

Controls will include simple directional movement through WASD or arrow keys with a single interaction key (either E or Enter). This interaction key will allow the player to interact with other NPCs and objects in the environment to either make progress in the puzzle or reveal hidden lore to the world.

Since the setting takes place in an underground world, the player will have the ability to light up sections of the screen with their mouse to act as a flashlight. The light can help reveal secrets that lay hidden behind foliage or within the shadows that may prove useful to the player.

We may include UI elements to show key items picked up throughout the levels and other useful information that may help players complete puzzles.

Whether or not the game will include other creatures on each level as enemies is up for debate. While this adds to the dangers of exploring the unknown, it may take away from the whimsical yet mysterious atmosphere we are looking to incorporate into this game.

Key Challenges for Design

Convey story with limited dialogue. The main protagonist will remain silent for the majority of the game to allow players to identify more with their actions as opposed to their words. However, this means the only “voices” present in the game are from those that reside in the “memories” and “histories” that each level presents. With such limited sources of dialogue, we must ensure the stories are told thoroughly through animations, actions, and other sources.

Incorporating hints of mystery. While the highlight of the game is a journey to the surface, we want to ensure that there is always a lingering “shadow” behind the player, as if there is more to this game than just simply going up. Though we don’t want it to be too obvious or explicit, we also don’t want it to be easily missable. The player should be made aware of the hints but should not yet fully understand its meaning until later in the story progression.

Understandable yet challenging puzzles. Since many of the puzzles for the levels of the game will be outside known civilization, it would be too out of place to give the player instructions directly to aid them in the completion of puzzles. We hope to incorporate the design process in the creation of escape rooms to help us design puzzles that are not too difficult with limited to no written clues but also exciting to complete for the player.

Key Challenges for Technology

Storytelling through Unity implementation. Most of the story in this game will be illustrated and conveyed through the player’s actions and the limited text dialogue sprinkled throughout the game. As such, we need to utilize the tools given to us through Unity to smoothly transition between cutscenes and other animations to immerse the player in the storytelling.

Lighting. Most of the game takes place outside of known civilization, hence sources of light will be scarce. Creating the atmosphere for the game will require creative uses of lighting sources and features. These may include: player-controlled “light”, real-time shadows, support for multiple light sources, and more.

Controls. All levels will be played through third-person, 2d controls and ensure that these controls will interact with the 2d environment properly without bugs or issues such as collision clipping.

Key Challenges for Art

Contrast between industrial and natural areas. In the bleak and monotonous setting, we can convey nature as something beautiful and vibrant. Something compelling enough to draw someone out of their ordinary life to go and explore the unknown but beautiful natural world. We hope to make the art of this game embody this idea and reflect this contrast.

Natural animations. Since this game will be a 2d game, the animations will likely be done in one of two methods: frame-by-frame or skeletal animation. Both of these methods may prove challenging when creating animations for foliage and other natural elements.

Music and sound effects. The tone and atmosphere we want for this game has duality. We want to capture the whimsical mood of exploration while also hinting at a darker, more mysterious side to the unknown. Incorporating soundtracks for background music and effects will be a challenge for us to overcome.

Designing and creating game assets. We will have to determine the aesthetics of the game and create relevant assets that flow with the emotion and character of the storyline and gameplay.