Melodefense Devlog 6 - Concept Development 2
We are struggling a lot with the concept development. Let’s see what’s going on lately.
As a reminder, our prototype and the latest drafts were consisting of the following abstract designs:
Actually we are not satisfied with the current abstract designs. It makes it difficult (if not impossible) for us to develop a world open for a long run progression. An additional difficulty is the players need to learn (and we need to teach) some degree of a sign language. There are better ways to introduce things in a defined world so that players can understand them natively.
Another important point is, our graphic artist Murat Kalkavan is a very talented illustrator but his original style is not related much with the current minimal geometric concept. Currently we can’t make use of his talent fully.
CHARACTERIZATION
So we let him free to experiment on some character development and he came up with these sketches for the enemies:
These designs are much warmer, friendly and open to humor. But they also bring their own problems related with characterization.
For example, the characters in the above sketch resemble masks. This cultural reference implies tribal content which will probably conflict with the current music style and some other content in the game. This may limit other content in the game to stay within tribal context. Tribal context and music/rhythm game, Patapon is a successful implementation of this approach. Check that how they applied the tribal concept successfully to the overall world, story and audio design.
Another significant problem in this sketch is, the look of the enemies doesn’t tell much about what they do in the game. This is very important for informing the player clearly what’s going on around. The player should deal with the gameplay, not realizing what’s going on.
So we made another design experiment representing the function and upgrade system clearly.
FUNCTIONAL CHARACTERIZATION
TOWERS
The below sketch is made keeping the functionality and upgrades in mind:
- 1st row is a bullet firing tower,
- 2nd row is a lightning firing tower,
- 3rd row is another sound wave bullet firing tower.
Their upgrades are represented from left to right, and the last figures
show how a tower’s upgrades fire bullets. Once you saw this towers in
action, it is easier for later to tell their function from their
appearance.
Once the functionality is established we moved further with applying a very simplistic characterization. The shape of towers were already suitable for resembling a body so adding only the eyes was quite enough:
ENEMIES
Applying the same approach to enemies resulted in the following functional design. In the sketch below,
- 1st row is a regular enemy and its shielded upgrade,
- 2nd row is a fast enemy and its faster upgrade,
- 3rd row is a “+” enemy dividing into two smaller “-” enemies.
- 4th row is a slow enemy with a great hit point and its stronger upgrade,
- 5th row is an invincible enemy.
Then we applied characterization over the functional design of the enemies:
IN GAME LOOK
We didn’t want the game board look so crowded. For a more simple look we placed the characterized images in the tower toolbox on the right and queued the characterized enemies on the top before entering the game board. Game board only includes the icon forms of towers and enemies. Here is a realization of these characterizations during an imaginary gameplay.
Needless to say this design is also a draft and we are still not satisfied with it. We will keep on working on it:)
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Cheers!
Guney.
