Potential Game Directions
We decided during class last week that the general game direction would be following the narrative of a child, potentially the child of the ship captain, stuck on a container ship. We thought that the setting of a container ship allows for a lot of opportunity for different events, including things to be found in the containers, unknown passengers to be found, the ship encountering pirates, etc. Below, I’ve crafted a few different routes the game could take:
One direction could be one that prioritizes mystery and involves the child experiencing and/or solving a crime that happens on the ship. For instance, the ship could be taken over by pirates and the child is the only one who was able to escape being held hostage and is the last hope for the crew to take back control. The child would need to hide from the pirates and potentially gather materials that could help him stage the ultimate ploy against the pirates. Alternatively, the child could discover a decaying body on the ship and want to solve the mystery of who it is and how the body got there by searching for evidence on the ship and asking the crew for information. Regardless of the exact crime, the game would prioritize challenge, discovery, and narrative as aesthetics.
Another direction could be a more playful route in which the child befriends a seal on the ship (a concept we discussed in class) and goes on adventures with that seal. This could include discovering mini-games on the ship, potentially involving sorting or finding objects on the containers (each of which could serve as different “levels”), or the adventures could include just generally exploring the ship and ocean with the seal. This would likely prioritize fantasy, discovery and submission as aesthetics.
One final direction could be a more practical route in which the captain falls ill and the child must figure out how to commandeer the ship, find help from other ships while avoiding dangerous ships, reach the destination, and keep the captain (his father, in this case) alive. This may involve a probabilistic element that determines the likelihood of a neighboring ship having a needed resource or being a dangerous adversary. We spent time discussing this idea the most in class and talked about how we can make it a simple feed-based game in which the player is “dealt” challenges and must choose the best response given what they know. For instance, “the neighboring ship says they have drinking water but there’s a 30% chance in this ocean region that pirates are at the helm. you have 5 gallons of water remaining. what do you want to do?” can be the prompt and then different action options can be displayed. We also envisioned potentially borrowing elements from the game Spaceteam in which you have a chaotic control panel of actions you may need to take to control the craft and pop-up messages tell you what you have to do at given times. This type of game would prioritize the aesthetics of challenge, discovery, and narrative.
Playlist and Mood-board
The playlist I created is a collection of songs that most align with the third direction I discussed, since that is the direction we discussed the most. The songs focus on the adventure but also the uncertainty and fear associated with having to commandeer a ship on your own. The playlist can be found here.
