Building Alliances - Research leads and Gameplay ideas

Building Alliances - Research and Gameplay Ideas

In this weekly session, we spent our time going through different parts of our game pitch, finally settling on gameplay elements, as well as looking into different research paths to go down. As the director, I decided to do this early, and right after establishing our stylistic choices. This is so we can be sure of everything before developing our ideas more, and therefore make everything consistent to the theme and genre we are going for.

Firstly we decided on the name of the game. We wanted to go for something in line with what the game is about. After researching it, we found the word Solastalgia, which is the feeling of distress one may feel when their sense of place is disrupted by environmental changes. After discussing with the group, we all thought this would be a great fit for the name, so we went with it.

 Name of the game: Solastalgia

For the research, we wanted to have most of these done by the first pitch presentation, so we all took different topics to research. For me, I took Flood maps and disparity of support for places, but I was planning to come back to the others at a later date if needed.

Flood maps - Look up the Nottingham flood maps and research how different areas would be affected by the levels of water. This could be used for concept work to draw different areas and how they would be affected.

Nottingham Landmarks - what would happen to different places in Nottingham. We could alter different landmark buildings or areas in Nottingham to show how drastically thee water and the creatures it has brought with it have affected the area.

Diving gear - Look at different pieces of diving gear. what would happen and how would people use/ scavenge items to allow them to get around/ in the water.

Canal boats - Look at different types of boats, but mainly the canal boats would be the most interesting if we find a way to implement them that makes sense.

Effects of plastic to water/ wildlife - E.g. search effects of plastic to wildlife, make silhouette, draw around it to make a new creature.

The effects of natural disasters on people - mental/physical health, and how people turn to religion in times of crisis - religion that worships whales e.g. Vietnamese folklore, they are believed to be guardian angels that protect fishermen: they have shrines where whale skeletons go in, Dishonoured and the symbolism of whales.

Diseases you can get on a boat/ waterborne diseases - bring the idea from 0-100: what would they look like?

Disparity of support for places - Broadmarsh would have way more support, and more transport (probably more boats since its canal side), whereas somewhere like Hyson Green and Radford would have much less of a chance of surviving, much less receiving support from official bodies.

hurricane Milton and hurricane Katrina - effects of neglecting of support and natural disasters on different classes of people and also depending on where people are from.

After this, we wanted to make sure of some labels and genres that the game would fall into, since this would help us design assets. As the director, every label that was suggested I was sure to ask about, and see what the rest of the team thought about it.

Gameplay Labels:

Single player - since we want it to be a story driven game with survival elements, we think it should be single player since the world would be easier to revolve around one single player. Also the themes of the game would be more impactful if it was like this.

 Open world - We would want this game to be open world, with most sections of Nottingham being free for the player to explore. We feel this would be more impactful for the player, since they are the one that moves around and can see the environment around them without being forced along by the game.

Combat oriented - The player would have to fight creatures eventually, but in some instances could use the environment to sneak/get away from the creatures or hostiles.

With this discussion finished and us having a more concrete understanding of the game we are designing, it was time to next move onto the initial concept art phase. As the director, I believe I am doing a good job so far of guiding my group along the design pipeline, as we move onto create the initial assets.