Idea Development

After originally beginning and idea and then realising that this was not going to work in the time span we were given, and that we hadn't thought it through enough, we decided to reconsider options that we came up with in the initial ideas section.  In particular the concept of morphing the environment instead of the character seemed to be more unusual and interesting as a concept so we started to develop ideas for this.  This included:

• The character changing a particular property of the items around it to solve a puzzle e.g. change an object mass to work as a weight for something etc.
• A dual level system in which the player needs to switch between the level types in order to make progress through the game
• Changing gravity of areas of the map so that walls and ceilings are incorporated as well as standard platforms

Overall we decided that the level switching idea seemed to have the simplest and most effective gameplay possibilities and so we began constructing an idea for this. In particular we found ourselves gravitating towards the idea of opposites as a theme for this such as light and dark.  This then transformed into the concept of life and death, as edgy topics such as this are quite popular in games at the moment, such as Limbo and Play The End.  Our gameplay would be based on having two different worlds, a light, fluffy, happy world (with flying pigs :P) and a dark, deathly, dangerous world. 

The aim of the game would be to get to the end of the level using platforms from both worlds.  To make this more interesting we first decided that we would have a time limit of the length of time you could stay in the dark world.  This would make the game more challenging and also provide us with a means to create risk in the game. As well as this other character elements e.g the flying pigs would also change state and go from being a help, such as a bouncing platform, to a hinderence, by attacking/getting in the way/falling when you try to use them.   In order to progress through the level we decided that there should also be 'safe' blocks which exist in both worlds, and also checkpoints so that players don't have to start way back at the beginning if they fall off or die.

To give a better sense of our thought processes below is a mindmap of the elements that we have discussed.  Click on it to view a larger version: