As said during the first drafts feedback, I got to work on a new and more efficient design for the main area the player would start in, that being the village but deciding to make it much more flat and somewhat more open ended, allowing the player to go to their first objective then work their way to the next objective by going to a temple where the player would complete some puzzles related to Magic but also Physics based puzzles.
At this point the group all sat down and we decided to create some more ideas of how the player would progress, which lead me to draw up and create some storyboard sketches of how some of the puzzle ideas I came up with would work.
For the Design of the village, I wanted to have it be made around something important and since we decided to do a fantasy setting, I thought maybe the middle of the village should revolve around a large elder tree. For this I would keep the village as a rounded shape, making a small market stall centre that circles the tree and have the houses on an outer circle, this in theory would make for a great set piece for a battle with houses on fire, Stalls abandoned, broken or burned and if the tree would fall then force the player to manoeuvre around the village and see all this destruction and have the player feel a sense of danger.
The goal for the player we decided was for them to make it to a shrine that would allow them to teleport to the temple pathway.
A lot of changes in how they would get their first magic crystal came up during this step such as would they fight a fire monster before the Teleporter or would they find it in the Temples first room and have the puzzles solely focus on using weapons and jumping. We opted to have the player go to the temple first before obtaining the first magic crystal and so work would begin on the end of the village, the path to the temple.
After one of our weekly team meeting, feedback was given on the village to make it less flat looking as well as to start adding some environmental pieces to the world. Work began on this and the terraforming of the landscape around the village had began. Some areas seemed to be either too sloped for people or too flat still so this was a work in progress issue over the next while but after finding that sweet spot of not too high of hills and not to flat of land for the player we settled on a somewhat bumpy landscape.
Next on the agenda was the environment, making it seem more like a medieval area rather than some blocked out mess. The thought came to mind of a waterwall and a small river area near the village as well as adding in some blocked out houses to make fill the empty spaces, this would also show off the importances of this area and draw the players into a more immersive world. I decide in the creation of the waterfall and river to place them more closer to the area which the player would teleport to the next stage of the game to give more attention to this pathway and symbolise the importance of this route the player will be taking, creating a bridge to cross the river and blocking out pillars from the ground too.
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