{"id":4632,"date":"2016-05-02T05:17:31","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T05:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/?p=4632"},"modified":"2020-02-19T21:18:35","modified_gmt":"2020-02-19T21:18:35","slug":"radical-games-the-clay-project-proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/?p=4632","title":{"rendered":"Radical Games: The Clay Proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Clay is a project inspired by simple storytelling, an attempt to combine pixels, notes, and a background story into an experience that would make the audience feel something for the characters and get sucked into the game world. The game began with a simple idea, a mental image of a little boy breaking out of a building onto a bridge with a sunset, and\u00a0him panting and dropping to the ground, while a player is tapping harder and harder on the screen to get him to stand up and keep running. Over time, a story has emerged of a world complete with a population of clay\/terracotta people, a set of large tyrannical antagonists, and a subplot for the game specifically is\u00a0to be simply about a connection between two friends. It is to be heavily music-based, with the notes and the rhythm matching the main Clay’s\u00a0footsteps and drawing the player into a meditative state.<\/p>\n

\"Clay<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0 The piece of note paper, including the first idea for the ‘clay’,<\/i><\/p>\n

concepts for the music, thematic elements, and the ending of the story.<\/i><\/p>\n

However, this is a ‘radical’ video game design class. Most games are designed to bring the player into some sort of a ‘trance’ – what would be different about this game? The radical aspect of this game, in my opinion, is that, while being so simple, there will be no way to keep track of a score. The only thing driving the player to play the game will be whatever emotional connection they have to the character. There will be\u00a0no way to measure how far they get\u00a0into the ‘endless’ level\u00a0unless they’ve beaten it (which will certainly require a lot of time and perseverance). And hopefully, with slow, droning music and an adequately designed setting, the trance state that the players are brought into will be one not of energy, anxiety, and hyper-awareness, but one in which their brains are opened into pathways of thought and focus that bring them into a more relaxed and real-world-productive state.
\n\"Clay\"Clay<\/p>\n

Concept art for the antagonist (top) and the main character (bottom)<\/em><\/p>\n

The game will feature assets that will attempt to work in ways that the player would not expect, but will still make sense. For example, there will hopefully be creatures crawling around the temple that the game is based in that the player can encounter – upon touching these creatures, either nothing would happen to the character, or something positive would happen that would catch the person off guard. If there are creatures that resemble broken, crumbling forms of the antagonists, maybe upon coming into contact with them the protagonist will take pity on them and give them aid. Torches, which are\u00a0generally used to provide light, could be used to harden the clay and thus have a negative connotation. Generally, while providing an entertaining and compelling experience, I want the game to make subtle, consistent nudges at the player’s expectations of what a game should be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Clay is a project inspired by simple storytelling, an attempt to combine pixels, notes, and a background story into an experience that would make the audience feel something for the characters and get sucked into the game world. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":4633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[215],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-radical-game-design","wpcat-215-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4632"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13145,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4632\/revisions\/13145"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}