Context of Practice: Deciding Upon an Idea

The next stage that I went through was actually starting to generate a couple of idea paths so that I could expand my though process and get some ideas flowing. I choose to draw out a mind map as this is the best way to get an number of different ideas down very quickly and in an organised way. During this process I looked into a range of different things to be able to get the best results and found that firstly looking into existing games was a great starting point. By looking at games that were already out there I was able to break them down and analyse them, looking at there setting, lighting, mood that's created and the overall composition of the level so that I could take influence from all of them and narrow the idea for my own game down further. Along with looking at the games I also wanted to look at existing genres that were already out there and see how they fit into each game.

From the mind map above I wanted to get a good starting point for a game level but one which was obviously heavily influenced by environmental storytelling. For me personally the idea of having a voice over is very appealing and one much like The Stanley Parable due to its fun, lighthearted nature and also direction of how he will tell you to do something and you can choose to do it. I would like to take this idea forward but maybe keep it so that you can only do what he tells you to do and it happens around the player automatically. I then also wanted to incorporate the idea of a pathway like in the game The Path as it is a nice idea that you constantly have something to walk along and you can't deviate from it, even though you can in The Path game. The last point that I would want to include in the game is that I would like this to almost be an introduction to the actual game, like a demo, much like what they did with The Stanley Parable. I think this idea is interesting and unique as you are only able to move forward for this first 'demo' level and it acts like its trying to introduce you and show you what it is capable of before it shows you the full game. This is what I want to achieve, merely through the power of a voice over and create something that uses the environment, around the character, to tell the story.