Week 19: Off The Map

Our main project for year 2 is the Off The Map competition, which has finally been briefed to us. If you're wondering what Off The Map is, it's a competition hosted by GameCity along with the British Library to create a level with that years theme. DMU won the first year of the competition and almost won the second year, so we have some high standards to follow.

This year, celebrating Alice in Wonderland, we need to create a level based off a section of the book. If you'd like to read up on this years competition more, follow this link! The start of the project had us randomly placed into groups, which some people were not happy with; I've been with different people for every group project so this one was no different for me.

The last week has mostly been discussing our ideas and trying to get them down on paper, whether this is just writing or drawing. We decided quickly that we wanted to make a side-scroller and have some sort style change as the level progresses, the group also decided to start with the "Underground" theme as we felt this had a lot more potential for exploration. I did what I enjoyed and began drawing down my ideas for the level.

The images above are my initial ideas for the level. I imagined the game starting with Alice in the fields and like the book, she would follow the white rabbit, she'd then quickly be falling down the rabbit hole where an art style change would happen; at this point I wasn't quite sure what style change though. The group also made the usual Pinterest board to gather reference.

After a few more talks I redid the level layout, this time trying to incorporate ideas that people had put forth so far. The file is quite large so I am sorry if the text on it can not be read.

This layout is not final as people are still putting their ideas forward and concepting, but it's a good start for when we need to begin a level block out. At this point I decided to tackle the style change that I had imagined and after seeing the game Ink Quest by Lionhead I knew that would be perfect for trying to get across the idea that Alice was inside the book. So with some inspiration I did some concepting!

The style transition concept was well-received so I did another, showing the style in full effect. The idea still needs work in my opinion and I think more variation on the paper could be used but there is definitely something intriguing about the art style so far.  

At the moment I feel very enthusiastic about the project and I think we'll be starting week 2 strongly, with a meeting already set up for the early afternoon so we can plan our week ahead. If I can keep up this amount of motivation for this assignment I think I could potentially produce my best work yet.

Notes & References

GameCity & Off The Map

Lionhead's Ink Quest