My game is about a woman named Kaira who lives in a post-apocalyptic swamp world. She has amnesia and is trying to recover her memories while also keeping herself and her friends alive in the swamp. I got the idea for the game several years ago and was able to bring part of it to life last semester in the nonlinear game class. My basic premise was based on the idea of a post-apocalyptic swamp and the kind of animals that would inhabit such a place. This is why for much of the game Kaira is the only human I wanted to showcase how different this world was from our own. One of the ways I tried to make my game different visually was making the environment unnaturally colored, the grass is purple and the sky is magenta! While I wanted the setting to have a bit of a fantasy element to it I also focused on making cool colors and specifically keeping green out of the game. This will contrast with a later map where the colors will be much warmer to illustrate that this other location is an oasis of warmth in the swamp. I’m not sure if my game qualifies as radical right now. I do know there is a specifically combat based mechanic I want to implement that I have not seen before. I’d say my game is raddish, working on being all out radical but with a bit of room to grow.
But I also wanted this very unrealistic place to have connections to reality. One NPC encountered in the first level is a bioluminescent swamp wolf. While his fur is a normal color for his species it is the algae that has made its home in his fur that cements both this individual wolf as well as his species in the “Down and Out” universe.
I was originally designing a plain gray wolf with glowing bits before I discovered that there is a type of wolf that lives in Florida’s swamps, the red wolf. While this wasn’t the biggest change it added that connection to our world that I was looking for. Before making the wolf a specific type of wolf the game didn’t have a real-world location in mind after this however I realized this game took place in post-apocalyptic Florida. For now the wolf encounter functions to hint that this place is an altered version of a real place. Also in all honesty it was an excuse to include bioluminescent fauna, which has fascinated me since I was a kid.
Other than the swamp wolf Kaira also encounters an african serval in a tree, animating him falling out of it is a trial I am working on overcoming. Once Kaira encounters him he will turn his attention to the follower character, a lizard person called Zhis. Zhis and Shari, the serval, know each other it turns out. Shari functions as the game currently stands as a hindrance rather than a helper. He distracts Kaira and also makes the player backtrack to gain his favor. Eventually he will be a follower character like Zhis, once I learn how to do that at least.
As we can see Zhis, unlike Shari and the red wolf, is an animal from pure science fiction. An amalgamation of bits and pieces of other animals. She also fills a different role than the other NPCs encountered thus far, she operates as a companion while also reminding Kaira of their overall goal. In the paper prototype the most confusing element seemed to be lack of a clear goal for the player. I hope by having a cutscene with Zhis to make things a bit clearer without removing all elements of mystery, they are playing an amnesiac afterall! As far as where I want to go from here, I need to make a cutscene because as Zhis and Kaira are currently programmed they cannot interact. I am also working on animating and coding Shari’s one time animation and making the wolf collide correctly.
