Monday, 26 September 2011

Mood Board

I created a Mood Board using very pieces of artwork and photography from the different sources. This is to help give an idea of the inspiration I have used for the style within my game. I found these images used all over the web but they all helped my imagine and generate idea's for parts to my game.

Mood Board

The Brothers Grimm

I decided to set my game in the world of The Grimm Brothers fairy tales as these have a more dark and mysterious feel to them. I want my game to be designed with a rather twisted feel to the childhood fairy tales everyone knows and loves rather the cliche fairy tales that everyone is used too such as the Disney stories we grew up on. The Grimm Brothers version match this exactly. This also could lead to some very creepy artwork for the game.

Having previously played American Mcgee's version of Alice, the art style real caught my attention as it was a twisted take on the story we all know. The brother grim stories are similar to fact that they are twisted takes on the originals. The feel achieved in the Alice games would fit well with stories I plan to include within my game and could potentially lead to a very twisted visual feel.

Death's messengers

I have been looking into The Grimm Brother's fairy tales and I came across a story called Death's messengers.

 The story is basically about a man who helps death after he is beaten by a giant. The story mentions "death's messengers" these are such as sickness and fever. If Death was used as the character of my game these could lead to some very interesting mechanics such as spells or powers used through the game as the character develops. Death is also a good concept for a character as it creates a broad appearance and fairly blank character so I can develop both appearance and personality myself. I could link the character into many of the Grimm Brothers other stories/fables to develop a setting and open world. I will now start to research what certain stories mean and the objective with them.

Looking further into this small story Death never gets to claim the giant. This would make a good story for my game. Maybe changing this story a little to make the main the "giant" and have Death seeking to claim the giants soul. To link the main story into other fables I came up with the idea that the bad guy could be a demon of kinds and release his minions into the other parts of the game to change the more famous stories from The Grimm Brothers fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood and Repunzel and Death then has to fix the stories and search for the bad guy to claim his soul.

The messengers mention within this story could also be powers which death get throughout the game, their for gaining more power and helping to defeat the demon in the end. These idea's were inspired by the game Kingdom Hearts.

As the game is based off a book of fairy tales a main Hub were the play can progress from world to world or story to story would be helpful to add a linear working to the games story. This could be something similar to the book of pooh part of Kingdom Hearts. The first level of my game could also be the start of the Death's messengers story were the villain defeats death and gets away. This first initial level would be basically boss fight were the player must lose in order for the story to progress, simply facing an enemy a lot more powerful than the player will create this effect.