Ideas and Written Concept 1 - Paco Casares

Game Studio 1 Crimson Tale:
Broken into parts:

Setting ideas:
Very old and ancestral times. No real advanced technology is used. Everything is highly mysterious and misunderstood. Characters and cultures follow beliefs, legends and superstition very closely. People strongly believe in the spiritual world and uses it to explain natural (and unnatural) events.

Landscape and Geography ideas:
High Mountains with lots of trees and forests with a hint of variation to most lands and areas. Some rivers. I wanted to give a Winter/Autonym sense to the landscape and the areas.
We should concentrate on a small area of a very large country in the middle of a continent, with no seas (or a small fraction)

Color Gamut:
Oranges, Browns, with a white crisp frozen blue for the winter snow. We can use a strong change for a particular emotion we want to kick in.

Number of Areas (ideas):
There has to be at least two villages, a bigger than the village town, a cave, the ancestral unknown temple, two paths to go between areas, and a bigger area that connects with most places.

Flow Chart of Game Events
I want to create something linear for this concept and idea. We cant really have a lot of choice in a 1-2 hour experience.

Length of the experience (Ideas):
I do not think that anyone, the teacher, the students, or us will play the mod any longer than lets say… one to two hours. So id says concentrate on quality than quantity.

Story Ideas.
I have been thinking about doing a fairy tale that follows a similar style to red ridding hood, jack and the beanstalk, and Hansel and Gretel. The story of this legend/tale will have a much darker feel and atmosphere. Sev and I have an idea of creating a setting where a small village, two young male friends finds an unknown ancient ruin, and when exploring inside and reading the wall of the story of its people. Spirits of its past wake up, but unnoticed, the friends then come back to its village.

Exited of this discovery, they start explaining to some village people what they have found, only to be noticed the lady elder of the town, dashed to the young teenagers with urgency and asked them the questions of where was this discovery. The elder explains that their spirits is easily disturbed and that they had a very unsettling end to its people, and that there is a reason why this ancestral haunted place was hidden from the naked eye. She urges them to explain if anything out of the ordinary happened… but it is all too late.

The small village drops down the temperature, the leaves of the trees around the town turn grey, every source of light turns dark and every shadow turns ti a unsettling sinister black. One of the biggest worries that the wise elder had, has happened.

A Vile, disgusting creature lurked from its shadow and black mist was spreading from its hair and armpits. It has long black dirty nails, fragile skinny as bones body, and green glowing eyes without pupils. With a face that is hard to understand its beauty, its black mouth Hisses:

“You deserve our punishment, you have read the story of our people, will understand our secret, or die trying and vanish for ever”

By then, everyone in town has already hidden in their houses, locked the doors, closed their windows, shut their curtains, and buried in the safest place.

A fierce battle happens between the Wise Elder Old Woman, The young warrior and his friend the fragile and humble cleric of the village against this unknown creature. For all it happens, a severe cut and a bite to each of this young battle artists. The Wise Lady remains untouched

The creature runs away, and laughs really loudly, and turns and disappears unto thick black fog that it simply fades away.

The Wise Elder explains carefully that the creature has cursed them with this attacks, and that they will turn into wandering ghostly creatures and eventually die. If they don’t find a cure, and a reason why the people of this Temple perished. With this they have to travel to different towns and dungeons, find guidance and help from other folk, until they learn a important lecture.

Ending Concept/Idea:
No one has been able to discover the true story behind the evil creature. No one that has entered and read the murals has survived. If Rocky and Namo take more than 2 game hours (time changes significantly in games) to discover true story behind this they will die, and a cutscene will be introduced where they turn into something strange and disgusting.

If they manage, a cutscene of the real princess and of what really happened will be introduced. To give the final End to what really happened.

Game play:
I had in mind a more Action orientated adventure than RPG focus. Because Rocky (a name in construction for the warrior) and Namo (a name in construction for the humble healer cleric) have both got a curse, I wanted to give a time limit (ninety minutes to 120 minutes) where they have to complete their Main and Final task. I think it would add a extra level of gameplay and urgency.

Because they are cursed, I also wanted to give a very experimental levels where they change to other forms or creatures, and they remain like this only in some parts of dungeons/caves/temples you name it… giving them strange and new abilities. With this, in here id like to introduce a new gameplay concept and some fresh ideas.

Id like to incorporate a small maze in one of the dungeons, and in one of the temples that the Traveling Friends visit, a puzzle where the panels of the painted walls move and the player has to place the story of the panels in the right order to open the main gate that opens to disclose the real ending to the story of the cursed evil creature.

Character and Biography:

• Rocky- A Young warrior, has learn how to fight since he can remember, his father taught him well and now he has to know where he can take his limits.

• Namo- Is a young cleric learner, Namo just returned from the Cathedral of the clerics at some distance city and just came back to spend some free time with this best friend Rocky.

• The Wise Elder- An Old woman that knows a little bit too much, and with it, likes to keep it her self. Has managed to keep trouble at bay without problem until today.

• The Wild Vile Sinister Creature with a Young face (name in construction) –
  
  A Spirit that is easily disturbed. Was once a beautiful, very powerful, Princess of its people. One day she understood incorrectly and undertook a mistaken action. The people took the wrong impression, thought bad of her and never thought once of forgiving her. Instead they gathered, locked her in this damn place far away from everything and buried her alive with all her belongings and servants and painted a mural with a misunderstood story of what did never happened. This spirit is tormented by anyone that reads this, so she curses them, and gives them the task to learn the real truth behind her story, or die trying.
  

More?- ….

Game Design, Maps, Lore, Self Discovery… I may need a little bit of help around these corners. What do you guys think!

…

Must be Complete by next Friday (but start now):

-Rough Map (sketch and ideas by Game Designers, Final Production by Digital Artist),

-Concept Art of

• Setting and back-story
• Characters (+Bios)
• Flow chart of game events
• Game areas
• Rough map
• Conversations

-Breakdown of Activities

A Draft of:
Setting and Back-Story, Characters and Bios, Flow Chart of Game Events.

A List of:
Game Areas (plot), Scripts, Conversations, Custom Concent, ETC.

HOMEWORK.
Discuss this idea and share new ideas to implement with this concept, or come up with a new one. Then we can discuss what would be the best to use.

We have to do some sketches, drawing, characters, map, STUFF.

We have until the 26th to show some progress.

I hope to at least hear a comment of this thread by tomorrow or Wednesday.

I am happy to come up with a simpler concept as well, I know I have the issue of complicating everything my self for no apparent reason.

Next: I am going to break down on who does what. (Very soon, like tomorow morning)

What I am going to do:
Location and Landscape Art. Characters Ideas, Sketches for Characters. Temple Sketches.

What we have to concentrate:
Rough map, Concept art and Breakdown of Activities.

I hope that I haven't written too much! Till next time.

PS. Please comment at least.