64Digits

Everyone's posting blogs about game projects; time to board the bandwagon.

Also, this blog has content. Yes. And pictures. Ohhh yes.

So, I don't do as much game development as I ought to, but exciting project ideas always spur my creativity. The following three concepts are my goals for this year; games which I wish to have completed or made significant progress on by the end of 2012. Here we go:

Unnamed Black and White Platformer

I've always loved games that focus primarily on exploration, level design and the beauty of the world. Some of my favourite games have these characteristics, games such as Shadow of The Colossus, Knytt, Metroid, LoZ: Wind Waker, and the list goes on.

When I began making games, I worked on a game titled, Procerus Universa (Tall Complex), a platform tower climbing game. Of course, back then I sucked, and scrapped it. I had since been anticipating how I could re-imagine the idea and start working on it, and thus, in the exeunt of my phase of depression, and the revival of creativity, the re-imagining has commenced.

I was playing around with the idea of hand-drawn games (as you will see in my second game-dev project below) and I remembered how as a kid I'd draw mock-up game levels to play with using my imagination. I did some basic concept art to get me started, and I reflected on what I had made. This reflection led to my idea: An arty, hand-drawn, platform exploration, tower climbing, black and white video gammmeeeeeee.

BAM

This is just a mock-up. Hopefully the graphics will be more hand-drawn looking, possibly even using my original line-strokes as well as hand animated sprites.

To see how I reached the final product that is the above image, and to prove it was hand drawn, here are the steps I took:

Step 1: Scanned in drawing

Step 2: Filling in the space

Step 3: Background, and then the final product.

I'm already working on the gameplay, using that mockup as a test room.

Wall, an oblique art/exploration game

This one is similar to the first concept; the graphics are generally greyscale and the world is hand-drawn. I'm a'fix'n for this one to be a top-down/oblique, surreal exploration or puzzle game.

The game is inspired by the spaces created by Giorgio De Chirico, and the technique of M.C Escher. I first explored the art style in this artwork, which I slapped onto that blog I did a few weeks ago. Expanding on that technique, I started work on an oblique drawing which I created to be used as my new blog banner, but is currently unfinished. While I was making that banner, I came up with this game idea, and it's stuck, so that's what the game will likely look like.

Dealing with the logistical issues such as construction of the space, out of view areas behind shapes/buildings and visual depth (problematic due to lack of vanishing points in isometric and oblique), will be tough but fun. The most exciting thing for me about this game, is that the world will be hand drawn, meaning I will actually draw the world on a single piece of paper and then digitise it. So the game will essentially take place in a piece of artwork.

Untitled Arena Sandbox Survival Game

This is just a core concept at the moment, and could possibly be the largest and most difficult of these three projects, so I'm going to save its development until very last.

Basically, what I have in mind is a mash-up between Halo's Firefight, King Arthur's Gold and Hempuli's lovable Paradise Fort. My game is set to use pixel-arty graphics, limited to a small blue-ish coloured palette. Players will play the role of an evil dictator who is sought to be killed by many nations, and is taking refuge in a secluded place of sorts. He must defend himself against invading forces. The Game will have a cold-war theme.

And that's about it

This is all a bit ambitious, I know, but my goal is to at least prototype each one of these ideas. Tonight I'm thinking of doing an all-nighter to do creative stuff due to my insomnia and excellent productivity during the evening.

Oh! I also have some art to show

My Fav piece gets IMG'd, others get URL'd: