Title: Dimensional Drift
Synopsis: In “Dimensional Drift,” players navigate the story of Blob, a young, formless protagonist who, after a heated argument with his parents, storms off and accidentally discovers a hidden door. This door transports him into Blob City, a mysterious place filled with secret portals that lead to various parallel dimensions. Each dimension exaggerates and distorts aspects of Blob’s original world, presenting unique puzzles and challenges.
Starting as a simple and naive character, Blob’s journey through these dimensions is transformative. By interacting with the distinctive characters he meets, Blob not only evolves physically but also gains new abilities that help him solve increasingly complex puzzles. These interactions and the skills they yield are crucial for navigating the interconnected dimensions.
As Blob progresses, he begins to uncover hidden truths about his origins and the enigmatic Blob City. The narrative builds towards a climax involving a final, intricate puzzle that opens the gateway back to Blob’s home dimension. Now transformed and evolved, Blob must confront the ultimate challenge: reconciling the lessons he’s learned during his adventures with his newfound identity.
Characters: Blob City serves as a place for transformation, featuring characters that challenge and mold Blob into a being ready to reconcile with his real-world origins. Each character introduces Blob to a crucial aspect of personal growth—patience, confidence, knowledge, and strength—through uniquely designed puzzles that reflect their identities and teachings.
- The Sage: A wise man residing atop the tallest tower, known for his profound understanding of the universe’s rhythms and the patience required to master them. His puzzle involves a large circular disc with multiple independently rotating layers. Players must manipulate these layers to align celestial bodies—stars, planets, and moons—according to hints found in ancient texts scattered throughout the tower. This puzzle not only challenges patience but also precision in recognizing and acting upon cosmic patterns.
- The Daredevil Racer: A youthful, undefeated champion of the racing circuits, his confidence and bravado captivate all who watch him compete. His puzzle involves participating in a high-speed race through a labyrinthine circuit, brimming with dynamic traps and shifting obstacles. Players must balance high-speed navigation with strategic decision-making to overcome the course, embodying the racer’s daring spirit and quick reflexes.
- The Archivist: A scholarly woman who oversees the Great Library, a repository of all universal knowledge. Her strong belief in the power of learning and understanding is unparalleled. Her puzzle consists of a series of scrolls and books that players must read to decode and comprehend the hidden mechanisms within the library. This intellectual challenge requires keen attention to detail and the ability to connect historical insights to solve the overarching enigma of the library’s ancient system.
- The Iron Matron: The formidable trainer who presides over a colossal gym, renowned for her unparalleled strength. Her puzzle is a massive mechanical device that Blob must operate by pulling levers, pushing weights, and arranging gears to activate a giant engine. This challenge tests physical strength and endurance, as well as the ability to strategically sequence mechanical actions for optimal outcomes.
Audience: “Dimensional Drift” is designed for players who enjoy narrative-driven puzzle games that combine elements of adventure, personal growth, and exploration. The game targets an audience aged 12 and above, appealing to both young teenagers and adults who appreciate a thoughtful storyline woven into gameplay. The game is ideal for players who are fans of titles like “Coraline,” “Alice in Wonderland,” and other whimsical yet profound journeys through fantastical realms.
Tone: “Dimensional Drift” is meant to be thought-provoking and curious in nature. The overarching narrative, reminiscent of the archetypal “coming-of-age” story, will hopefully also evoke feelings of fulfillment upon completion. We imagine the tone to be somewhat lighthearted as a whole, but interspersed with heavier and more meaningful emotional moments as the Blob reaches critical points of growth.
Setting: The setting of “Dimensional Drift” is two-fold. Blob starts off in a very mundane, human world, likely off in nondescript suburbia. Blob City, where Blob is transported to after the fight with his parents, is meant to feel mysterious and otherworldly to the player, and large and imposing to Blob when he first enters it. However, over the course of the story, the city should begin to feel more familiar and welcoming—if still bizarre—as Blob begins to learn and find his footing in this alternate universe.
Key Challenges for Design
Conveying emotions through our main character
Due to our main character choice being a Blob, we expect it to be difficult to convey emotions through our blob. Prior to Blob growing limbs, we may use different ways to show emotive states. For example, we might choose to have Blob change colors as they learn new emotions and responses. We’re also aiming to make Blob relatable and customizable to the player, meaning we have to offer different customization options.
Introducing an “Uncanny Valley” feel
As mentioned previously, some of the key inspirations for our game were the narratives of “Coraline” and “Alice in Wonderland.” Both stories offer a fantastical yet unsettling feel, like there is always consistently something “not right” about the world that the characters traverse. We want to introduce this feeling into Dimensional Drift while keeping it as a background feeling of the game. We don’t want this feeling to ever overwhelm the player, but we want to keep a mysterious, dense atmosphere as the player continues through the game.
Character Design
The characters that Blob meets throughout their journey are instrumental in both gameplay and story progression. This means that characters must be well-written to the point where players are able to empathize with the characters, understanding their motivations and lessons that Blob learns from them. Finding ways to provide exposition and context to characters without word-dumping their backstory will be a difficult challenge we have to consider during the development of Dimensional Drift. Understanding what abilities each character gives to Blob will also be another consideration we must decide for each character.
Pacing and Puzzle Design
Introducing new abilities and emotive states means we need to continually consider how the abilities we introduce can affect both current and future puzzles. For example, if Blob gains the ability to fly, then we cannot build a chasm or high wall as a puzzle as Blob would be able to simply fly over the puzzle. We also expect that our puzzles should reflect the narrative plot line of the game. If Blob is at a moment in their life where they are continually struggling and failing, the puzzle should be difficult. Likewise, if Blob is “winning in life” then the puzzle should be relatively easy. We are still experimenting with what abilities we should give Blob, but we’re hoping that these abilities offer fun, new, and unique challenges to the story of Blob.
Deciding on Impactful Settings
We need settings that help build on our storyline and meaningfully contribute to our character arc. These settings need to be diverse enough to keep the players engaged through the “novelty” of each level, but also specific (and limited in their number) enough that the player doesn’t lose track of where they are in the game. Because our imagined landscape is a city, we need to pick settings that represent the atmosphere of an alien city, but are manageable in design and implementation. Such specific criteria makes it a challenge to decide on the most impactful and meaningful settings to set our mystery and embed our story, but we’re hoping that through a critical brainstorming session, we can come up with an initial set of settings.
Key Challenges for Tech
Game Engine Usage
We will be learning how to use a new game engine in [insert game engine]. This means learning how to use assets, writing script, and other technical challenges that come with the use of a game engine. We have decent experience with coding outside of game engines, but little to no prior experience with using game engines as a team. This means a large part of our effort needs to be put in learning how to use the game engine.
Sprite/Art Rendering
Both a design and technical challenge, figuring out how to render scenes, levels, characters, and other art assets will be something our team needs to learn to do through game engines. We’re hoping to use a simple graphic style, hence our characters being non-anthropomorphized blobs. Our intended game perspective is also a 2D or at most 2.5D perspective, so rendering lighting and 3D models is something we hope to avoid.
Game Mechanics
Figuring out how to incorporate the different abilities that Blob gains access to will be a unique challenge to our game. We intend for the abilities to vary in their use case. From combat to traversal to healing, Blob may gain a wide range of abilities that each provide a unique use case. Having a wide range of abilities while also not overwhelming the player with choice is both a technical and design challenge we foresee ahead.
Designing for Different Operating Systems
In order for our game to be accessible through both Mac and Microsoft devices, we will be looking into the design requirements for each operating system. Our priority is to be able to design a game that can run on both systems without additional resources/effort on our or the user’s part, but we are not sure if this is possible yet. Working around this challenge might be tricky since none of us have much experience in game development. We are aiming to learn more about this as we create our game.
Integrating Physical Elements with the Digital World
Right now, we are entertaining the idea of using a mix of physical and digital spaces for our game, building the storyline and creating the main game structure on an online platform while designing physical escape rooms for certain levels and mysteries. One of our ideas is to have the “key” found in the physical escape room to be a QR Code that can then be scanned by our online platform to unlock new levels and mysteries. This would require us to learn how to create, manage, and scan QR codes, and since none of us have any experience in doing so, this might present a slight challenge.
Appendix
Links to Individual Submissions:
- Caleb: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2024/05/06/checkpoint-1-individual-5/
- Sophie: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2024/05/07/checkpoint-1-individual-6/
- Brendan:https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2024/05/07/checkpoint-1-individual-brendan-mclaughlin/
- Ecem:https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2024/05/07/dimensional-shift-individual-checkpoint-1/
- Brandon: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2024/05/07/individual-checkpoint-1-for-p2-bsalt/
