Introduction, SPV
Summarizing a little bit about my work, I am designing a videogame for my diploma thesis in architectute school of Democritus university.
My videogames story is about life. The player gets to play as a child. A character that is in need of an adventure. A little girls that feels trapped, alone inside her house, due to common life requirements, decides to take the first step to her freedom. She takes the leap of faith and runs away from her house, seeking her life adventure. That she does not know, is that with her freedom, earns and the first step to her growth. She, after her adventure, will return as a complete adult.
The first place of the videogame is the children' s bedroom. That suffocating prison in our hero's eyes. This place aims to introduce the player with the hero's background. Who she is, what is happening to her. Her room is located highest in her house and alone. Followed by a long hallway that seems neglected. Our hero is an only child of a wealthy family. Her parents are always absent from the house due to work obligations, and despite the comforts that they provide her, there is always missing one, their companionship. The position of the room are symbolizing the individuality and it;s big windows the will to escape from it. The long hallway is there to point the way out and the neglected environment to hint some information about her background story.
As Cambel said in Hero's journey, the first step outside ordinary life is the most important of every story's first part. Here is literally a threshold. The little girls has to take the leap of faith from her house's front door to her adventure, not knowing where to land. Now there is no way back
The following world, is a riverbank. Here the player will get familliar with the videogames UI, and the basic mechanism's. This place, in storytelling is where the hero gets familiar with the story's environment. He meets his friends, his enemies, he learns what the story will be about. In videogame's terms, that is the point where the player gets familiar with the game's mechanics.
"At a riverbank, that at first looks like a heaven like place, the player gets familiar with the UI and the basic gameplay mechanism. The Good and the Evil, the positive and the negative. As dualism states, there are two sides in every story. In life we need to keep good and bad experiences in balance.
In gaming terms, I took that simple opinion and translate it into my gameplay mechanism. The balance bar. The little girl, running away from her house safety, now has to deal with extreme conditions. Floating from one edge to the other, being in exiting places and in opposition, in dark others, she is in need of keeping her feelings in balance.
The mechanism of the videogame is a bar. The player has to keep the content of this bar, in the middle. Equilibrium is a state of feeling that one has when being in balance. It is actually the way that our own body informs us that we are about to fall. The player struggles to keep the "feeling meter" in the middle. "
To Exit the game press alt F4,
