Specialism

I began this project with the focus on creating a concept that allows me to explore different areas that I haven’t been too while at the same time letting me focus on my specialism; which is 2D concept drawings. So I came with this theme of dreams, not in as in a goal, but as in that world that you live in every night in your subconscious. Sure the theme of dream is mystifying as it is, however it is really both scientific and a cosmic thing as I find out, and get more and more fascinated by it.

So I began by listing down different sort of dreams or myth about it, as many as possible, some of them are as follow

Nightmares

- being chased

- trapped on a spot

- going thru a maze

- suffocation

- drowning

- falling from high place

- trapped in dream (limbo)

- Sleep paralysis

Good dreams

- wet dreams

- flying free

- lucid dreaming

Neutrals

- past memories

- visions of future

- mash up recollections

- Abstraction

- vision from others

- Interference from real world

(heat, cold, movements, water, noise)

- Looking at others/  happenings

- Analogies (animal, objects)

Myths

- Alternate reality

- Alternate reality (waking up)

- omen/ lucky charm

- Alternate vessel

- Analogies

- cross dreaming or intertwined dreams (online?)

- hit the ground before waking up causes death

- message from the dead

and with all these possibilities I already know that the limit to creativity in this project is boundless.

So then I came up with a story about a girl; initially named spelled Narcy but was then later changed to Narcie in order to prevent mispronunciation. Narcie is sort of an Alice in wonderland figure, very curious, but less playful. She’s a little bit like Paprika (character from a movie of same name that inspired Christopher Nolan’s Inception) in terms of being a peculiar person, but also less playful.

Above is Narcie during development.

Above is Narcie’s final look. Her design is based on Hayley Williams of Paramore and the most striking feature is her tangerine hair. She wears clothes and accessories that were designed after a dream-catcher.

The game is about how player takes control of Narcie to walk through different dreams/ levels and see how she deals with them. Level always starts and end with Narcie on her bed IN her bedroom IN the level, there is NO real world; YOU ALWAYS WAKE UP IN A DREAM. The main goal of the game is to get Narcie from the start to the end of every level/ dreams safely. Since its based on dreams, anything can happen and this affects the gameplay. While its mostly platforming and puzzle solving based mechanics, it may also involve more fancy maneuvers such as flying or fighting.

I will be presenting my work in SWF form, its basically a Game Concept Document that includes developent, character, narrative, music, environment, meaning behind and etc, I will also be submitting a PDF copy. Some of the artworks that I put on the document are as follow.

This is my thumbnail for environment and scenes.

This is one of the finished scene/ enviro artwork, ‘Narcie & The Steam Train’. The level represents Narcie desire to escape from her nightmare, its simply a chasing level that is designed to be intense but also full of surprises, the train itself resembles a caterpillar that can bloom into a butterfly after passing a tunnel. More to be explained in the page below.

This is another finished piece about ‘Narcie & the Flying Boxes’ which are actually floating bedrooms.

This is the logo design for the game.

Lastly there’s music. The music in this game for the most part will be sort of spacey, cosmic, chill out, think Pink Floyd or Death in Vegas' slower tunes, or the game Braid where it simply uses classical piano pieces, but also, there'll be more intense ones as the story gets deeper in Narcie's head, it'll turn into a more sinister sound like in Silent Hill series, I have composed an original acoustic song depicting a scene where Narcie is traversing through The Flying Boxes level, could potentially be the main theme of the game.

I also made another one which accompanies the SWF file called, ‘Dreamwalk’. I also made a mini flash animation for Flying boxes that can be watched here http://epiclone.deviantart.com/#/d4z2rb3.

Lastly here are the things that I came across and some of my influences that helps in weaving this project together.