1. The Setting

Creating the setting for the game was done partly on impulse, partly on the inspiration I talked about in my getting started post, and partly on the type of game I was trying to make.

The rules I was sticking to with the creation was that the game had to have addictive qualities, and also have a simplistic and also consistent playing style and environment; one that didn't grow boring over time and was basic enough to be built upon. With them in mind I got started.

My first thoughts on the game were something that used computers as its theme, and I was leaning towards the puzzle genre in my preferences. Generally speaking puzzle games are where the successful games fit into. It seems from looking at my questionnaire that the majority of people were also orientated towards playing puzzle games, were it scored quite a few more votes than any of the other genres I'd put as options. So puzzle was looking up as my key genre.

If you look at a lot of commercially successful games out there, The art style in the games is never overly amazing, just good enough to suit the setting and be aesthetically pleasing at the same time. Often times the graphics are cartoony or anime-esque and the general mood of the game isn't overly serious. Angry Birds is very cartoony and uses block colours, Temple Run and Subway Surfers both pull off 3D environments, though they still are very toon like, Subway Surfers in particular. Flappy Bird, Jetpack, Doodle Jump, and Candy Crush, all use 2D cartoony graphics as well.

Unlike console games, where realistic graphics are the common norm app games can get away with cartoony graphics because of their style. From playing or analysing various app games for this project I decided a simplistic art style was what I needed.

My next thought was '2D or 3D?' The genre isn't restricted to only using one type as its convention, but on a general basis most app games are 2D. So which was the better one to go with?

If I was to go 2D I'd be staying more to convention, and having a 2D game meant that I'd be shortening the amount of work needed to create said game. 3D on the other hand means getting to grips with 3D modelling rather than creating sprites, and piling on the work for animating the elements of the game.

So I chose 3D. Why you ask? Well to start with, it's to do with the idea I have for advertising the game. What I have in mind just wouldn't work in 2D. Besides how many 2D adverts do you see for games or for anything generally? In 2D the ability to make complex puzzles is limited considerably, due to being confined to only moving in X and Y, whereas 3D has X, Y and Z to work in, which can be extremely beneficial when creating puzzles.

Maybe if I was still creating the level I'd be more tempted by a 2D game, but in the context I'm using 3D has more flexibility. Another thing to note is that console games are largely 3D, and that's my future market. I'd get more useful experience for it working in 3D than I would 2D.

The next thing to think about was what would the features of the game be? I've noticed with app games that a lot of the gameplay styles used in them can also be found as gameplay elements in mainstream console games. App games seem to take those mini-games, which are minor elements not seen much in the console games they originate from, and make entire games out of them. This was the idea I was working off initially as my key element.

When I was initially drafting ideas I was drawing inspiration from one particular game series, or to be specific one of its mechanics. The game in question is Ratchet and Clank, and the mechanic in question is the different puzzles used for the hacking mechanic, which in different in each game. This picture on the left is from the decrypter mini-game used in Tools of Destruction, which involves tilting the PS3 controller to guide a ball to various nodes, where it forms a connecting point for electrical signals to travel through and override the security. Going off my previous  statement, this seemed viable, especially since the iOS can detect the phone being tilted in various directions.

I chose to pick something different. My reasons being that while the idea was good, it was 1. Too similar to its initial concept, 2. Contradictory to the cartoony style I was going with, and 3. It didn't seem doable with the time and resources I had and 4. Its not good practice as a designer to use the first idea that enters your head. Now that I look back I realise that there's potential for a good game there and it could turn into something in the future, but for this project it wasn't suited.

As it stood I was back to drafting, and an idea then came to me during the process, that would become what this game's setting would be. I've always liked hexagons as shapes - six sides, six directions to fit together in, 60 degrees between each one, which is a convenient angle if you do designing, and out of all of the known shapes, fits together with each other the most efficiently. As I was thinking it sprung to mind, and it just twigged.

I'm a real sucker for for things that take advantage of all of their options. Hexes do just that. They're not wasteful in the space they take up. Say you were to use the 6 sides of the hexagon and relate it to player choice. When I was finding sources for the post on Game Theories, one of the sources had a blog article on how player choice is a key feature of any game, whether they're big choices, like determining a storyline through your actions, or small choices like deciding which way out of six possible directions would be the best way to finish a level.

This would be my key element I decided - Hexagons. This is what I wanted my game to revolve around, and as such I started incorporating it into my setting, which I decided would be a cartoonist computer mainframe that used hexagons as the circuit boards. My inspiration for how it would look came from another Ratchet and Clank gameplay element, that took place in a digital training course. The wall structure in the course was the key point of interest. I was a fan of the black and blue colour scheme of the circuitry, so they were the colours I chose to use along with the hexes.

I called this game setting that I'd decided on the Mainframe. As with the game's actual name it's kind of Tron-esque but the digital space there is known as the grid/space paranoids. Besides this won't be a commercial game. Not yet at least.

I'll leave you guys with a rather cheesy advertising slogan that I thought up for the game whilst doing the research post on types of advertising -

Making the Mainframe Mainstream! 

Look forward to more stuff in the future and if you haven't already then take a look at some of the other concept pages back on the previous page.

Thanks for viewing.

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Subway Surfers Character Image
Flappy Bird Gameplay Image
Doodle Jump Gameplay Image
Ratchet and Clank Decrypter Mini-Game Image
Ratchet and Clank Hypershot Course Image