Old The Game - Research Log
- Ryan Nicholson
- Jan 1
- 17 min read
Some Ideas For Now 12/02/2021
Sir President A 2d game where you are a leader of a country and you must choose which matters are important, by choosing one over the other. Protecting life in your own country but losing money or choosing attacking separate countries but gaining money but losing population.
Stalins Guard Taking place before Stalins death and show his actions are taking a toll on his safety, you can play as a person that works for Stalin, where you have to perform what he asks of you, such as kill a family but you have the choice to spare them and let them run with the chance of being caught or kill them but gain money to help your life. In the end, Stalin dies and you are now executed like all of his men showing that all the killing you did was not worth it.
Heavens Gate You are god and you decide who is let into heaven and who isn’t, you can see what “sins” they have done and if they are allowed into heaven, you can only allow a max amount of 2 people in heaven out of 5.
Old A horror game where you slowly see your parents grow old and become passengers in their bodies but instead of showing it the normal way it is shown off as the parent being possessed and evil scaring you, in the end, what you have to do is face the “demon” to come to peace with what’s happening and to begin the mourning process, you go through memories of your life with your mom slowly becoming more demonic chasing you forced to leave them behind, as each level which is a memory fades you enter a memory of your mom in the hospital and if you stay and let your demon mom reach you and you make peace with it and hug her or continue walking into the darkness stuck in a never-ending loop.
Some research is still needed but I believe some of theses will be good with the Theme of life. I think I will stick with the Old as I have a better understanding of what to do here.
Mind Maps 25/02/2021
Theme Of Life
That Dragon, Cancer: That Dragon, Cancer tells the story of a young boy diagnosed with cancer and shows the parents going through the everyday experience of watching their son developed in a worse way. The story of this game is beautiful and makes you feel so sad, watching everything go down
The Beginner’s Guide: The Beginner's Guide tells the story of a person struggling to cope with something they do not understand and going into old game jam games trying to understand what kind of person a game developer called coda was like by playing his games which have been lost and tries to find clues to inform the player more.
Interactive Story Games:
These 2 games tell a story which you cant control but only watch and begin to understand, which I think is great when it comes to a theme of life as we dont have control over life and only watch as it comes at us.
Headliner: Novinews:
Headliner: Novinews is a game which shows you making your own decisions when publishing news taking a toll on society, a more exaggerated example but it does the job of showing the power of your decisions and morality of practically having people's lives in your hands and choosing to make morally correct choices which could affect the player negatively.
Blind Justice:
Blind Justice is a game where you are a judge and people lives are put into your hands and what you deem worthy of being a crime or not. You can choose between Innocent, Execute, Labor Camps and statement, to get their story, You can also be bribed but you might get caught if you accept it. This game, like Headliner follow the same life theme but these have the people's lives in your hands whereas in the top 2 we watch the person losing their life without being able to do anything.
Simulation Games:
These 2 simulation games show how your actions can have major concequences towards people and your own life, puting your life into your own hands which does happen in real life, in these games you live through the world and make decisions that affect the already decaying world
Until Dawn - Simulation Story Games:
Until dawn has you playing as a group of characters of which you have to try make al lof them survive and not get themselves or each other killed. This story game has you have not much control over your surrounding but more of how the characters should react. This game makes our actions not only important but permanent, you can't just find them again and save them or revive them, you are stuck in a linear storyline that branches from the choices you make, kinda like a multiverse.
Mood Board 10/03/2021
Mortality:
Coping - Using substances to cope with the loss or to forget and not making peace with it - could be angry
Illness - visualization of an illness shows rotting or someone become a monster/something scary In Muslim culture death is seen as a blessing for god and only god, meaning that if someone is to die it is supposed to be by gods hand and if done by suicide or murder then it counts as a great sin but I think the idea of seeing death as a blessing from god and having your time be your time as comforting as it allows people to come to peace with their mortality as their god deems it necessary
Grief:
Depression - Depression from the loss and causing reactions based off of anger and regret from the final moments Denial - Denial is the first step in grief not facing your problems and hiding from the truth. This would work well as I want to add a 7 stages of grief into my game by having each memory represent each stage.
Grief is an emotion you feel when someone you love is taken away, in my eyes it doesn’t just have to be death, it could be a breakup, losing a friend or just leaving your hometown. With grief you cannot ignore it, if you try to your pain will build up and explode in anger or depression. Commonly people say there are 5 - 7 stages of grief and sometimes there can be less or more. These stages are Denial - “They’re still here” Anger - “I hate them!” Bargaining - “I’ll change for you, I’ll make sure to stop it” Depression - “I don’t want to do anything” Acceptance - “I’ve come to peace with this.” These stages aren't compulsory to happen, they can happen in mixed order or you could just go through a few of them. People can feel really guilty when dealing with grief, constantly looking back at memories where you make yourself out as the bad one. Symptoms of grief consist of: Fatigue, Nausea, Lowered Immunity, Weight loss or weight gain, aches and pains and insomnia.
Ways to try seek support for grief: Talk to family and friends about your pain or just keep yourself in happy and comfortable surrounding. Draw comfort from your faith, Religion is very powerful when it comes to grief, it allows people to get over it easier due to known that, that person is going to a better place, or will be getting another life depending on the religion. Support groups or Therapy can help too, having professionals to talk to or people that have undergone the same experiences can help as well. I have had to deal with grief recently, I had just gotten out of a relationship which I was enthralled with to the point where the girl in that relationship was my everything. The relationship had ended poorly for me and I was left alone and I gained a real understanding on how grieving works, I had lost people in my life but no one that was ever super prominent in my life.
Afterlife: Reincarnation -
Reincarnation can come with hope and helps guide a person into acceptance like becoming religious to add a second meaning to your life or giving yourself hope for your or others afterlife, this can also be used as a reason for a horror approach by using satanic means which can add a horror element. I am not very religious but I do believe in some religious ideologies like being reincarnated, I think its a more peaceful way to come to terms with death but also come to terms with your own immortality
Heaven/Hell - Heaven and Hell are mostly religious symbols but have been adopted in many places and are mainly used to keep you in check and excited for your afterlife.
Death - Death is really everything combined as everything practically resolves around death and life, with the two of these have polar opposite affects with life/birth bringing happiness and being categorized in a better light whereas with death being shrouded in a dark light of mainly sadness anger and pain, which I think really gives the ideas of Heaven/Hell and reincarnation a external use of giving death a brighter light and give people hope
I will try to mix all of these into my game, especially the grief part as I feel it would be key to the story I'm trying to tell and will allow me to put more personal emphasis into it due to my current grieving.
Love - Love is definitely something that can cause someone to feel grief, having someone in your life which you hold dearly leave is heartbreaking and soul destroying, I like to think to swans which mate for life. Swans create a never ending bond and if a swans mate dies then they can die from heartbreak which I think is a strong pull from their grief.
Similar Games 11/03/2021
GRIS:
GRIS is a game about dealing with grief and facing pain. Its a game where you find light in darkness even when everything is already dark. The game tells a powerful story with the main character being a girl which is dealing with trauma and we follow her as she begins to regain strength and her voice. This game is showing her process of grief and shows her beginning to come to peace with her pain and trauma and find her voice which she lost due to all the pain
That Dragon, Cancer:
That Dragon, Cancer is a heart wrenching game watching and dealing with a family looking after their young son with cancer, you hear real audio of the child and it really immerses you, even with a unrealistic art style, everything that happens hits so hard because of how much you bond with the child and the family. The game uses audio and visuals to make you feel the pain and hurt the parents would be feeling or the child would be feeling
How This Integrates:
I want to take parts of both games and interpret them into my own game, I want to use the heart and gameplay style of that dragon cancer with voice acting and a very linear story but also add pieces of Gris’s pain and meaning into it aswell, making everything that your character is reminiscing on have an extra painful meaning especially using the stages of grief to feel more pain. With the grief I plan on shortening it to a smaller amount of stages and maybe make the surroundings a still image with audio to make it faster to make and to polish which is kinda what That Dragon, Cancer does but they do have a more 3D modeled area but I think this could work well in my game as it can be a short game but give players an understanding of the world and allow replayability to see the story in many different lights. I am planning on making the ending branch, either you face your sorrow and walk towards the dead mother which is following you and get a better ending or walk into the darkness past your last memory of her being stuck in darkness
Control has a very similar art style to my game with the bland whites to show in majority of the game but then to have a red light in an area to signify a something bad or a battle happening, the gameplay isn’t very similar having the only similar part being that they both have a story which they player is following and the art style colour palette is practically identical. My game is a low poly low detail game whereas Control has practically real graphics for their details.
Similar Movies 11/03/2021
Relic: In this movie it has an old lady go missing and her daughter and her grand daughter try find her but when they go to her house it has a black mold all over it. I believe the black mold represents her dementia and her body slowly rotting away, with the house having the mold showing she is forgetting it and with her body slowly rotting it added a horror aspect to the film making the mother rather scary but adding a brighter side to once the darkness is peeled off her. This movie makes me ask many questions as there are some theories saying that the old ladies daughter and granddaughter may actually be her in the past and this whole movie is her coming to terms with her aging and in the end understanding her mortality
Anything For Jackson: In Anything For Jackson we are introduced to an elderly couple which we come to learn is grieving their dead daughter and grand- daughter, they start to take a satanic approach to their grief by trying to bring their child back to life by taking the baby's soul into a pregnant lady they had kidnapped, so that their child can be reborn. This all goes wrong and all ghouls are freed. This movie did a good job at making you sympathetic towards the elderly couple in this movie regardless of the horrible acts they are committing. I think this is good to look at with ideas of how people can handle grief with different religious or crazy ideas out of desperation.
Themes:
These movies match the themes I'm trying to look into with Relic being more directly close to my original idea and Anything For Jackson being more of a scarier bigger version than my idea, facing the ideas of reincarnation head on whereas I think I would go with the pain causing the idea to be created but I still think I could try interpret the desperation and grief into my game story somewhat. Nothing too out of hand but I think I will definitely add some horror aspects to the game to assist the idea of fear of death and denial
Other Movies: I think movies that show people grieving death or anything similar to it, like a breakup are helpful as research. I do see Avengers Infinity War And End Game as good examples as Thor is going through depression in the movies and you seem him start to close himself off, become more demeaning to himself and stop maintaining his health. When Thor calls his Hammer when he is travelling back in time and he actually gets it and he seems surprised that he is still worthy is a great representation of depression showing how he didn't believe in himself thinking he is a failure.
Midsommar is a film about a girl that is dealing with the trauma and grief of losing her parents and sister due to her sister killing them and herself. She goes with her boyfriend and his friends to a festival which ends up having an odd tradition but as odd as the tradition is it allows the girl to embrace the pain of her family's death and it makes her more confident, in a bad way though. She ends up joining a cult and this shows how people who are dealing with stuff like this are easily controllable and can easily join cults or be convinced easily.
Pet Sematary is a film about a family who lives near a Cemetery which animals are buried but with a dark secret, the animals are brought back to life but their soul is now a dark monster. This movie works with grief well as they did bury their cat which came back to life but then their daughter died and even though they know the repercussions could be bad they still bring her to the cemetery to be brought back to life as they can not life with the grief.
Collateral Beauty is a film about a man who loses his daughter and ends up going on a spiritual journey to find answers from the universe, he pushes away his friends as he sends letters to Love, Time and Death and they respond with unexpected personal responses which I think is a great way to symbolise the battle which is going on in his head as his mind begins fighting against its self to stop the grieving process
Hereditary is a film about a family which has to deal with the recent loss of the grandmother the family begins to unravel a dark secret which the family is now inheriting from her. This makes the demons now begin the takeover of the family. This has a strong message behind it which is being interpreted as actual demons, I see this as the demons of the past of what they had to go through with their grandmother or issues they had with her pouring it causing internal conflict in their own minds.
The Babadook is a film about a mother who is dealing with her husbands death and has issues handling her child who has a fear of monsters, I believe the monster is a representation of the mothers stress and pain being conveyed as a monster instead of a her doing it herself, making this push her and her child away from each other causing immense internal conflict.
Interactive Story VS Linear Story 11/03/2021
Telltale Games - Hell Blade
Telltale games, games compared to the game Hell Blade are 2 polar opposite games on the story telling spectrum, with Hell Blade Practically being a movie of which you control the character but not their decisions or the plot compared to Telltale Games which have many different decisions of which you can choose, still being somewhat linear with each decision leading down to a path which has to go somewhere making some decisions feel useless due to the fact that they can sometimes not change anything in the grand scheme of things but it also allows gamers to fully immerse themselves as the character they’re playing which in some cases can be better than a character they have no input on
Heavy Rain - The Last Of Us
Heavy Rain and The Last Of Us both really rely on the player being involved with the characters and liking them. With these two games one of them had controversy with the fact of players not liking the ending or lack of input they had when it came to The Last Of Us 2 as the entire game its been a linear story and they introduce a revenge plot on a character that the game makes the player hate due to their actions but in the end prevents the player from enacting that revenge plot which they have been trying to achieve for the whole game. I feel if The Last Of Us 2 had more Interactive story telling mechanics it could make both sides of the fence happy, even if it was only for that ending. This would allow all players to be happy.
Telltale Games shut down due to mismanagement but some external company has bought the assets to the company meaning that there could still be more telltale games coming out. Telltale games have special aspect of it as they are practically cutscenes which you cant interactive with sometimes they allow you to search around in some scenarios so that you can make a educated decision but they give you a short time to make that decision so it allows the player to make a decision they might regret like in my game where at the end there are two options to make, either go to the bed or go to the red shrouded lady which will make you either see the good ending or you fall and get stuck in darkness.
Supermassive Games is very similar to telltale games and I kind of see them as a replacement to Telltale games, even though they released games before Telltales shut down but I still see them as a good story telling company. Quite similar with the low time to make a stressful decision but Supermassive Games have multiple characters you control which makes you have to focus on keeping them both alive and not making any accidents which could end up in multiple deaths. Like in Until Dawn where you have to try make everyone survive until the end of the game
BioWare isn't fully a story telling company as their game series Mass Effect is primarily story based like Telltale with decisions you make being crucial but their 4th installment into the series kind of dropped those key story telling aspects but if you ignore the 4th game the series is almost perfect with great story telling and great combat. These games have the cutscenes of story but the interlace intense gameplay where you fight enemies due to your decisions prior.
Creating A Story 11/03/2021
Hero's Journey:
I will be slightly following the Hero’s Journey and Kish-oh-ten-Ketsu to write my story for the game. I will be following mainly Kish-Oh-Ten-Ketsu as it gives me the most freedom with writing and will work the most with my game and its story. The game will be relatively short which is why I do not need multiple new jumps happening. If I were working on a movie or a full on story for a larger scale game which would need a larger story I would use The Hero's Journey as it fills in gaps and allows the story to take its time without rushing to a revelation or a finish. I will be using the twist in Kish-Oh-Ten-Ketsu as the mother becoming more monstrous and scary which I doubt the player was expect
Story Draft 12/03/2021
The General Story Draft:
The game will start in a dark room with a door visible, you walk through this door and see your character by your mothers bed where she is ill, you hear some music and some soft talking and coughs. The second room will be the same scene but there is less light and your mother is now gone and all you hear is sobbing with you sat in the chair by the bed.
Third Room now takes you into a bar which then turns into the characters mind. The room will be dark until a few seconds pass and that will be a key memory. The memory will be you and your mother watching a movie. all these scenes will be a still 3D image of the room where you can walk around and see around the small area with the outside being shrouded in darkness. - This room everything will feel like normal.
Forth Room will be an argument with your mother and yourself, the reason unknown and you finally say “I'm sorry” whilst looking at the memory feeling the guilt of hurting your mother.
Fifth Room will be the hospital bed again with her laying ill from the intro which you then have the choice of either going to face the mother which is now a monster and make peace or walk into darkness to finish the game. I might make it a choice of pressing on the door or character so it more obvious rather than accidently wandering there.
Each room will try and show a stage of grief, not all 5-7 but a small amount, possibly 2-4. I want to show enough to the point where the player doesn't feel overwhelmed with everything but still has an understanding.
Level Streaming 12/03/2021
.CSV - A .CSV file is a spreadsheet file which uses comas to separate values. So if I am making dialogue for my game, I would put each line of dialogue in each box behind a coma to make a subtitles script.
Data table - A data table is a collection of fata organized in rows and columns, which can contain notes, Variables and scripts. In a data grid each row is an observation and each column gives information about those observations (Rows). In UE4 I would import a .CSV file to make a data table which I would then use in code. I will start testing these soon.
Strut - A strut, also known as a structure is an easy way to create your own variable type or group. Like a sword that does 11 damage and is named Jon will have at least 2 variables, 1 being a Integer for damage and one being a string for the name and text which I would then strut so it is grouped together so rather than having to grab each variable I would only grab the strut which has those variables in there for the sword.
Proposal 17/03/2021
My game will be a immersive first person story game where you face the issues of a person grieving their dead mother. You are in this persons mind and they go through steps of grieving and you witness each memory showing each stage of grief with voice acting, calm instrumental and some subtitles for the players to read. The player when in the memory will not have a large plain to walk around in, there will only be a general area which shows the story that needs to be told but no movement will happen, it'll just be a still 3D image which you can explore and the audio will inform you on what's going on. Through each step the mother will start looking more scary and monster like and when you’ve reached the final room you either choose the final stage which is acceptance or you walk away into the darkness.
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