Story Concept
4/18/20
Overall story:
- The main character is lost
- Stuck in the forest, trying to get out. Why?
- Maybe hear something or see something that leads them into the forest.
- The user will then find a doorway into the (Mandelbulb 3D) world.
- The player has to help another character escape to their world, too. Why?
- The character can do things in the world you can’t and vice versa
- Game feel mechanics:
- Exploration, finding your way back
- Needing help from someone or something
- Use each each other and help one another
- “Darmok and Jalad” TNG reference
- Epic of Gilgamesh mesopotamian myth
The Hero’s Journey in 8 steps
1. The player
The player has to choose what kind of emotion they are feeling happy, sad, mad, anxious. They enter the world and they are in a forest trying to find their way out of it. They know how they have to return home somehow but they get lost along the way. Maybe they interact with animals in the forest and based on their facial expressions, the animals will react in a certain way.
2. Needs of the Player established
The player knows they need to get back home so they keep exploring and interacting with these animals and plants that are reacting to them by the way they are looking at them. The player at this point knows the mechanics of the world and that by their movements of their face, things around them react differently.
3. Transition into the unknown
Once the mechanics and the player’s world is established, they start to see another door forming in the forest and the introduction into the “enlightenment” doorway is revealed. The player does not know where this doorway leads them to. (Need some kind of prompt mechanic)
4. Searching phase
Through trials, tests, obstacles in the getting in the way of the player. The player will have to interact with a character in the game in a novel way that will help the player themselves or the character. Through puzzles, emotions, and the environment changing around them.
There needs to be a new element in this phase that goes against the player
Using the fractals as the trails or the environment to change your emotions
5. What the players will find in the world
The players will have the ability to manipulate or move the environment based on the emotions of the player, either the fractals will move or the character will be influenced somehow.
Overall themes:
The idea that “you” as an individual need to experience your emotions in a certain way. There might be people or things along the way that help you keep an open mind. Help you express them in a constructive way. Hard to tell who is helping you in this world though. Whether the character is or the world is.
6. Sacrifice/Consequence of gaining this knowledge
This still needs to be fleshed out.
Moral of the story is do you help yourself or help the character that helped you get to a certain point in the experience.
You need to seek the help yourself. Only you know what the path is for yourself. You have the power to find that path.
Finding the light at the end of the tunnel.
Ending depends on whether you choose to help the character or not. You have to return to your world affected but reborn again in a new way.
Mirror into your world but you will see things differently now. The animals and plants that you interacted with are doing different things now.
7. The return back
The new perspective in the forest will give the player new interactions with the things around them
The player will now see how their emotions affect the environment around them.
8. The change/metamorphosis
Some kind of realization that they have a responsibility to uphold
The player’s emotions can positively or negatively influence the things around them.
Example looking at a plant sad or happy can help it grow or not.
The enlightenment can be around the idea of being more self aware of emotions and teaching how to empathize in a way.
The enlightenment can be around the idea of being more self aware of emotions and teaching how to empathize in a way.
