Team members: Annie Nguyen, Cole Sohn, Christina Qin, Rita Tlemcani
General Concept:
We want to create a top-down exploration based game, focused on player creativity and curiosity in exploring the game world. It is set in a post-apocalyptic world where magical life has grown into, and the player is a “collector” who seeks to understand more about the past and current world around them.
Emotions:
- Curiosity
- Creativity
- Change
Mechanics and Encounters:
We were inspired to utilize some AI generated objects by the open-source Dall-E mini in our main mechanic, which is having the player select from certain “object cards” and combining them to create unique results. With this as the base, they will encounter a variety of situations that encourage them to use their creative puzzle-solving skills:
- Riddle puzzles, where the character tries to unlock treasure by satisfying the riddle
- Fulfilling requests from NPCs, where the character uses their materials to help, learning more about the world along the way
- Referencing a “combiner book” that guides the character in making basic objects
Challenges:
Being able to balance the number of combinations that we anticipate for while still giving the player enough creative freedom will be one of the main design problems. Additionally, we need to account for how images are generated (and then pixelated, which we run through) from the Dall-E mini, and how that might fit in aesthetically with the rest of the game. Ensuring a consistent style will be another core focus in the design. The last challenge is fine-tuning encounters that can encourage player creativity without leaving it too open-ended or too restricted.
The group concept doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11GmaEltQ1QlBBPsyItmrVv6-aw3TM4fDCwRRn-S46No/edit?usp=sharing
Individual concept docs:
- Annie: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2022/04/30/checkpoint-1-annies-concept-doc/
- Cole: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2022/05/02/dall-e-collector/
- Christina: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2022/05/02/moodboard-and-checkpoint-1-christina/
- Rita: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2022/05/02/moodboard-and-checkpoint-1-rita/
