Pi_Finity
Consumption
Brief
For this FMP I have been given the theme Consumption, I will need to research several topics relating to the theme in various contexts and cultures as well as the personal impact it has on me. I will do research on this before going in more extensively in my contextual and visual research after writing a project proposal, including a reflection of this year and how previous projects have went. The project proposal will also include a project concept and evaluation outlining a simple idea for the game based on the research I will gather on Consumption with an evaluation explaining how I would review my work. The project proposal should be broad allowing the project to go in various directions, too much detail would cause the project to become much more linear. Afterwards I should create a rough schedule for each part of the project which will change depending on my research and development. I will then do initial research, my contextual and visual, which will influence the project the most, I should reflect on why the research is relevant to the project throughout. With the initial research I will move onto the production of the project while explaining the creative process and how my research affected the outcome, I need to explain thoroughly to ensure people unfamiliar will understand. Lastly I will reflect and evaluate the whole project's process, what I contributed in terms of problem solving, practical skills, and comparing how effective my outcome was based on the intent of my research.
The definition of Consumption
Consumption is a broad term with multiple definitions, however the term is mainly used in a sense of taking an amount of something whether it is food, resources etc... consumption is also mainly used in a negative way as of its definition in economics, however there are ways of sustainable and positive ways of consumption. I will first look into a multitude of different topics relating to consumption before going into more detail with the topics I find most interesting.
I made a mind map with the topics I could think of off the top of my head, using more extensive terms before going into more specific topics. I also thought about how each topic could link into each other and thought about what unique topics I could create with consumption.
This is all before I researched in depth what consumption meant, therefore I made another mood board explaining the most common definitions of consumption along with other less used definitions.
Personally everything I have learned from Consumption before starting my FMP was from an economic stand point both inside and outside an educational environment, with curriculum I learnt in geography and Design & Technology both pushing to fix the problem of overconsumption and posters and advertisements everywhere also touching on the problem. The topics of overconsumption and addiction have been a constant reappearing topic I've had to learn about and now I don't find it that interesting nowadays with how repetitive each representation of consumption can be. Every representation of overconsumption I've found is either images and artworks of environmental metaphors of plastics and materials replacing the wild life or videos talking about how these problems can be fixed, if I focused my FMP on this topic I don't think I could make something that would stand out from all these iterations as all the already existing propaganda is simple and more importantly effective. This isn't to say that I don't find economic consumption important to me, I do think its important to adopt healthy and ethical buying habits and to think about the environment when investing in products; I think there are other important and compelling topics about other definitions of consumption that don't get touched upon as much which mean a lot more to me.
Going back t0 my definition board, I thought about how consumption could be used in a metaphorical way and gave a specific example of emotion and guilt, how feelings can often overwhelm and consume a person easily especially in todays society. I think mental health is a topic that is becoming more and more important, however from my perspective I haven't seen that many medias or advertisements touch specifically on dealing with problems like guilt. For the overall theme of this project I think I'm going to research and create a piece of media that covers the topic of feeling emotions consume you in which I will expand in my project proposal what I'm looking for and what I need to do. Having this as the main theme of the project is a stretch, as consumption overall is looked at an ethical perspective, however to make the topics I've chosen more relevant to the theme I could always draw more inspiration from my mood board; guilt and emotions will be the main things I look at but other aspects of my research could always be inspired by other topics like food, money and power.
Project Proposal
Rationale
Reflecting on my past projects, overall I've gained skills that have expanded my art and modelling processes by implementing different techniques I've learnt from many artists I take inspiration from. My first project, the Robot Project, tested my skill in both art and modelling, as I feel it set the expectations for my future projects so I could improve from the work I did. Research-wise, I found it interesting to look into games I had never seen before as well as finding joy in analysing games that I liked and finding things I never knew about it before hand. It was the first time I had made character iterations, in which I enjoyed thinking about shape language and drawing inspiration from images I found. Somethings I researched like analysing art pieces really influenced how my future artworks were made and what decisions I made when picking the design I wanted to model, especially when I was learning a program completely foreign to me.
Narrative Design was the project I was most passionate and interested in, as even though it involved less mediums, I loved researching the games Rainworld and Broken Age which really affected the concept art for the project. Fleshing out my character concepts was also very enjoyable and allowed me to learn about how to apply character and environment archetypes while developing a story. Learning about story structure also helped me simplify my story so it wouldn’t be too complicated because in the past I had a problem of putting too many ideas into one narrative, making it difficult to understand the plot. This was my best project, as I was very motivated making it and I enjoyed most of the development to the final project, proving that having interest in the thing you're doing is very important for a good outcome.
The third project about animation was by far the project I enjoyed the least, however I learnt the most practically wise. Before I had never done animation with a more complicated model and I had to learn a lot about rigging and weight painting, I also learnt about importing textures into blender. Learning about them is really important as it helped me create a satisfying outcome, however I think the reason I didn’t enjoy this project that much was because I was burned out from the other projects and my research on this project didn’t interest me as much. Also because I had less time to research so I could get the animation done, nothing really inspired me for what to animate either. Nevertheless I learnt a lot from doing animations for the first time in blender, I also like the techniques I incorporated like the 2d background and moving the environment and I want to improve doing animation in the future.
Across all my projects, overall I need to improve on finding inspiration outside the mediums of digital art as it would help me expand my sources of ingenuity.
Feedback from my last project "Animation" the project that I had a lack of motivation on and therefore did worse getting 3 Good passes. The feedback advice is pretty much the same, however, something that I have reflected on is the more I am interested and motivated in a topic I will work harder and better. This is prevalent in how I chose a topic about consumption that I was more keen to learn, and will hopefully do better in this project.
Evaluation
I want to record my journey as professionally as I can by using an online website detailing all my discoveries and the processes I used. At specific points in my journey I will ask for constructive feedback from mostly my peers but also teachers and knowledgeable and qualified people familiar with the themes in my project so I can try and improve. Finally to evaluate my project at specific points of my progress I will look back and reflect and with my final product I will write a summary reflecting on what I have discovered, learnt and what challenges I had faced while giving my thoughts and opinions on the project.
Feedback from my first project "Robot Design" even though it is my first project I did and have improved on since then, I think it's still good to look back and reflect to not make the same mistakes.
Feedback from my second and best project "Narrative Design" as it was the closest I've gotten to distinction missing one AO3 on an excellent pass, using research to inform a creative project, in which I was given advice to expand the sources I research outside digital medias and explain how my research influences my development. I will try and keep this in mind.
Project Concept
For my FMP, I've looked at multiple topics involving consumption and have decided I will create a game or at least concepts with the theme revolving around guilt and other emotions, with the hope of creating a message along the lines of how it's important to know how to deal with these emotions and not to let them consume you. I chose this because (going off what I mentioned in my rationale) the topics of emotions interested me and motivates me as I can think of many ideas linking to this topic, rather than picking something easier like the economics of consumption to go off on that would otherwise demotivate me. I want to involve both 2D and 3D art into this project, while along the way implementing other mediums if I discover something interesting, as I’m very strong at using 2D and 3D while including another form of media could be an exciting challenge. My main focus is to create something semi-relatable that will invoke a mutual understanding between the product I create and the viewer.
To help make this project I'm going to be drawing inspiration from my own personal experiences related to being consumed by emotions, as well as researching other peoples experiences. I’m also going to be using my knowledge of narrative structure to create a story to base the game/concepts off of. This time I will try to look outside of just artists to inspire me, I’m planning to look into written literature and music to help inspire me, for example I've been inspired by music artists such as Maebi who uses only instrumentals to invoke feelings of unease and uncertainty. I also want to experiment with implementing real life artworks into the game which would give me a wider range of tools and mediums rather than using digital brushes. The end goal for the final piece I will create will be to at least make artistic or written concepts, with the potential of making a game. I’ll most likely use Roblox Studio or Unity to achieve this, but I will look at other game engines if it comes to that.
I have also made a timetable indicating what I'll roughly be doing each weak.
Sources I could research other than digital mediums/ sources:
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Written : Books | Poems | Blogs | Forums | Documentations
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Artistic: Paintings | Sculptures | Music | Dance
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Other: Real-life photos | Mine and Others experiences
Proposed Research
Contextual Research
- Consumed by Emotions
Guilt
Guilt is normally the main topic I hear about being consumed by emotions, I therefore started researching guilt and its effects on people and how I could tie the topic into consumption. I looked at multiple websites detailing how guilt affects mental health and how to cope with guilt. I found how there are different types of guilt and different ways to cope with guilt.
The mood board on the left helped me collect a lot of visualisations of grief and summarises the definition of guilt while giving examples. A lot of the visuals I found while putting together this mood board show that a lot of artworks depicting guilt feature hands and eyes; I think this is to showcase the accusatory nature of guilt represented by pointing fingers and people judging or watching. I will add onto this later when doing visual research and tie it into my project more.
When researching I came across the interesting topic of religious guilt, the remorse, regret and anxiety caused by religious morals or issues. I also found a much more common but similar type of guilt called existential guilt caused by the belief that you aren’t living up to your full potential, both types relate to philosophy. I like these topics as I relate to religious and existential guilt or dread simultaneously, and I think they would be interesting focuses of a game especially when being consumed by these feelings of dread and shame for not living up to expectation or potential combined with the feeling of being judged by God. These themes can be unsettling to think about which is perfect for a horror themed game.
Poems & Quotes
For my FMP I’ve started to look at poems as they are effective ways to get across a message and make the reader think because of the hidden meanings beyond the literal surface of the poem. As the game I’m making is short and I want there to be enough substance to analyse at the same time, I want to portray a story that involves the player going through the events of a poem whether I include the lines of the poem appearing visually in the game or including references to interesting poems I find. As I said before, I had discovered religious and existential guilt, along with finding these types I also found these poems covering the same topics. One of my favourite ones I found was this short quote from The War of Vaslav Nijinsky by Frank Bidart, or Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016;
God said: GOD MADE YOU. GOD DOES NOT CARE IF YOU ARE "GUILTY" OR NOT.
I said: I CARE IF I AM GUILTY! I CARE IF I AM GUILTY...
God was silent. Everything was silent. I lay back down in the snow.
Religious guilt is about the regret and shame felt when betraying religious moral values, however this short poem made me think about the philosophical implications of how guilt is self imposed, and that no matter what we have done God if he exists only made us to live, and is not responsible for our actions or our guilt. We, as the ones that feel those emotions need to accept we feel guilty and have to live with it hence “I lay back down in the snow” The poem also ties in with the quote;
“The dog that weeps after it kills is no better than the dog that doesn’t. My guilt will not purify me.”
It is unknown where this quote originally came from, however I do think it carries out the a similar message to the first poem implying that guilt once again is self imposed as it is an emotion that creates self hate and regret to those that feel it, without changing the person's actions as nobody can change the actions of the past. I do like the imagery of the dog as it implies, as dogs are animals that hunt, that the actions the dog makes that it feels guilty for is natural and comes from its instinct to survive depending on what scenario the reader imagines the dog to be killing for. It's a sad depiction of how despite needing to do something for survival, we can still feel guilt as we might have hurt something or someone in the process.
Wanting to deepen my understanding of these poems for more inspiration for the narrative part of my game, I began researching the first quote Frank Bidart and what exactly was The War of Vaslav Nijinsky; to summarise what I found that Vaslav Nijinsky was a famous almost legend Russian ballet dancer known for his captivating and innovative performances and choreography born in 1899 or 1890 who by the end of his career due to a build up of stress from his tours and mental breakdowns off stage was diagnosed with schizophrenia and had retired in 1919, dying in 1950 at around age 60. I think Vaslav Nijinsky is a perfect example of being consumed by emotions and more intriguingly being consumed by his battle with schizophrenia, the main reason his career ended so abruptly. It was believed that one of the main causes of Nijinsky's health decline was because of the relationship between Nijinsky and Sergei Diaghilev, who was his professional partner but also lover as they both worked under the Ballet Russes. The relationship had ended because of Nijinsky's marriage with a woman called Romola. Diaghilev saw this as a betrayal and dismissed Nijinsky from the company causing him the detriment to his career and his mental state. Some other factors that could have contributed to his deterioration were the World Wars where he was interned as a Russian subject, the fact Romola was inexperienced being Nijinsky's manager and the fact that his greatest fear was hospitalization and confinement, which did happen in the end as he was moved to asylums after his diagnosis.
The War of Vaslav Nijinsky by Frank Bidart was first published in The Paris Review in 1981, where Bidart uses Nijinsky as a symbol of modernism and poetry, with Nijinsky's dance moves representing Frank Bidart's struggle and experimentation with language. The poem may also potentially hint to existential themes relating to God, which is one of the most engaging parts of the 30 page poem and is the most relevant to my research due to the religious and existential guilt represented with Nijinsky seemingly having an schizophrenic episode in the snow after hurting his wife and child three times. This is where the previous quote comes from where he believes God is speaking to him with Nijinsky responding with how he is guilty, and lays back down in the snow. Later, I will somehow incorporate or reference Nijinsky's story in my game just like Frank Bidart used Nijinsky as a subject in his poem, maybe not making the entire game based or centered around him but just having aspects that were inspired.
As fascinating as these topics and poems are I still need to connect these topics in with the theme of consumption and how I would portray these themes in what I am deciding what is going to be a horror game as the themes of losing yourself like Vaslav Nijisky did as well as how it's presented in Frank Bidart's poem can be quite frightening to think about, especially when a person can relate to Nijinsky being stressed from his career. Therefore I decided I wanted to research other emotions that can metaphorically consume a person before delving into any more sources for my research so I could expand my view of the effects these feelings can have and how to combat or cope with them. Later I will try and look for other secondary resources but for now to help find these other sources I must first look at different emotions to broaden my view of other emotions unrelated to guilt, however I didn't want to waste time by looking at every single emotion that a person could feel and instead made a survey asking questions about being overwhelmed and consumed by emotions as well as questions about guilt. I listed several common emotions and out of all of them anxiety was the most voted for.
The War of Vaslav Nijinsky
I found this helpful to my research as now I can focus on anxiety and how I would convey this in my game, the other questions I asked were about being overwhelmed and how overwhelming emotions affected them. For example I asked if there were any particular places or situations that may trigger being overwhelmed, in which most respondents answered with situations involving loud crowded areas and work or school. With this information I started gathering ideas and scenarios for the game, the most simple yet effective idea was to have the player be triggered by an interaction at a crowded party, resulting in them leaving and going outside to try and shake away the anxiety and guilt they felt. There are other responses to questions on my survey that could contribute immensely however taking the information and applying it to the development effectively is what really matters. Therefore before adding any detail to the simple concepts I had created for the game I wanted to try and build a plot structure for it; this is as I wanted a nice balance of how many ideas were in the game and creating a narrative structure to build off of would stop the plot from being too overworked. For now, here's some images of the survey and some analysis I did on the answers and how it could be useful for the project.
Here's the responses I was talking about earlier, with most people being triggered by loud crowds and areas, the question after asking how they cope with those situations. A lot of answers on the second question are very mixed, however there is a common theme of needing distraction like headphones or music which I could showcase in the game. It would be interesting trying to make a soundtrack for the game even though I don't have the full aesthetic of the game pin down yet. There are also some unhealthy ways that people describe having to cope with their emotions like shoving them down or hiding them, one of the other answers touches on this but it's good to learn about different positive or negative coping mechanisms so I have more options for the characters in my game and how they act.
When I have a narrative plan for the game I will come back to the survey for more details and ideas.
Contextual Research
- Narrative Design
As a starting point, my current plan for the game needs to have enough detail to be reflective and make the player think about philosophical themes of existential, religious and possibly other types of guilt. However it needs to be a simple enough to be conveyed in a game format, to be simple so it's not overcomplicated with ideas which would lead to the player being too confused to pick up on the story, and to be simple to be made or partially made in a span of 2 - 3 months.
From what I've already gathered, such as how guilt is a cycle, I'm choosing to focus on Todorov's Equilibrium - Disequilibrium, a narrative structure. I've touched upon this story structure in my Narrative Design Project with Rainworld, and I think this is the best structure to use for my game as it reflects how guilt's cycle can consume a person while also being a simple structure to follow.
Based on my current research and ideas about the game, here is the current plan for the plot, as well as an explanation as to why these particular events are added. Later I will develop and finalize this plan after I've done all of my research:
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Equilibrium - The Player starts out in the middle of a crowded party and by small interactions we can tell that they are already uneasy and overwhelmed. [Added due the survey responses showing most people were overwhelmed due to large crowds]
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Disruption - The Player makes a small accidental mistake of spilling food on another person. This causes the Player to have a surge of guilt and self loathing causing them to retreat to their room. [With my research on guilt, it is shown that a person trapped in a cycle of guilt can be easily triggered with small mistakes enforcing their self hate.] The player, being so consumed in their guilt, goes to their safe space. [According to the survey and the sources online most people calm themselves down by isolating themselves.]
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Disequilibrium - From here the Player's health deteriorates trying to get to this safe space as more things go wrong, an idea of a mishap is the music from their headphones cutting out [from the survey music calms people, it is also an example of a common type of guilt where a person feels bad for something that is not their fault.] The journey from the party and the safe space is undecided as I have yet to have inspiration for what the safe space is, however the two most relevant ideas for the journey are an ominous snowy environment [inspired by the one section I liked in the War of Vaslav Nijinsky] and a dark tunnel like pillow fort by the Player going into an entrance somewhere in their room, [it is general knowledge that turning a familiar and comforting theme into something disturbing and unsettling is an effective way to make horror.]
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Repair - The Player reaches the safe space, however we find out that this safe space is not at all comforting and is a desolate empty room. It is a place for the Player to wallow in their guilt and that by being by themselves they are only reinforcing their emotions having no one to talk to. [Guilt can be a hard cycle to break, without proper advise on how to control it a person can be stuck doing bad habits that only hurt them]
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New Equilibrium - We cut back to them being in their bedroom at the party, everyone has left. It is shown that the safe space is much closer, and that the long journey we had to take throughout the game was probably a delusion. [Hints that the whole time the Player was mentally ill, references disorders like schizophrenia and those similar.]The Player goes to bed still caught up in guilt, the Player hasn't changed since the beginning of the game.
I can also look at setting and character archetypes, however I think looking at settings and environments would be the most important as the most relevant character that I have planned is the player, and I think using the environment to represent the guilt consuming the player would be unique rather than having a monster character in the game.
I think the most relevant setting archetypes I could use would be The Island, portrayed as a place symbolising isolation where a character normally goes through an arc of finding themselves as well as it being the safe and secure home amidst a threatening environment. I could use this trope for the "Safe space" the Player needs to reach and throughout the game we do believe this is going to be a safe and secure home we can isolate ourselves in until the reveal at the end that it is probably worse than our room at the start. The journey itself to the "Safe place" can be represented by a mix of The River archetype and The Forest archetype as The River represents a descent into madness as the river turns and twists and The Forest is a wild place full of madness.
Contextual Research
- House of Leaves / My House.wad
Even with all of my current research, I wanted to have one more piece of secondary contextual research before I do visual, this is as I was still stuck on some specific parts of the narrative and I also wanted to research a game so I could take inspiration of how I wanted the story to be told in my game. I'm going to briefly cover House of Leaves but I will go more in-depth about My House.wad as it is easier to digest.
House of Leaves is a book published in 2000 by Mark Z. Danielewski, the book itself is hard to summarise as it is a complicated metafiction (a self conscious piece of literature that emphasises its language, literary form, and story-telling and reminds the viewer that they are reading a book) as well as having segments in which the book formats in a series of letters between the characters. I have not read the book personally as reading it online would be a disservice to how its formatted in a hardcover form (which I will discuss later in my visual research) as well as it being incredibly difficult to decipher the further you read, the book is also supposedly very graphic and touches upon a lot of triggering themes. Therefore I will be doing a short analysis based on the small snippet of information I have gathered on one part of the book, as well as leaving out some details to keep the research relevant to my project. Keep in mind because of the nature of the book my analysis as well as others' review of the book will be an interpretation and not the definite meaning behind the House of Leaves; my interpretation will stem from what I think is relevant to my project.
Afterwards I will go in more extensively with My House.wad, a Doom II mod released in 2023 by Steve Nelson as the House of Leaves inspires it and has an easier storyline to follow and speculate off of. I will also use My House.wad in my visual research as the environment of the game translates visually the HoL 's page structure well.
House of Leaves - The Navidson Record
There are several segments of the book however the most relevant part of the book that I want to look at is the "The Navidson Record" and in the book the story is written by a character called Zampanò who has died and the pages of this book were found. Zampanò wrote the book as a well written retrospective of The Navidson Record, a movie that does not exist. The story itself is about a family of four, Will Navidson the father who's a photographer decides to film the events inside their new house which they have moved into to contribute to his photography career (Will also names the movie made out of the footage he collects as The Navidson Record .) As the story progresses strange things start to happen within the house, like a closet appearing between the children's and the master bedroom, as well as an interior wall being measured as being slightly longer than its exterior side breaking the laws of physics. Will Navidson invites his brother and professor over to investigate the physics breaking wall but a new addition to the house appears in the living room in the form of a door to a hallway that changes its length, it is also a physics breaking phenomenon as the door to the hall is placed on an exterior wall meaning a person should see the hall on the outside of the house in which you can't; Will makes a recording of this called the five minute and a half hallway. It is alluded to in the story that Will and his wife Karen have a rocky relationship as they are unmarried and how Will is obsessed with his career, Karen does not want Will to go into the hall as she thinks the hallway is dangerous and doesn't want her kids growing up without a father but he explores anyway, the hallway changes shapes multiple times while he's in there and he only finds his way out because he hears the crying of his daughter near the entrance.
Will hires people to investigate the hallway, in which they find rooms beyond comprehension, it is a freezing maze in which they have no light and it's silent with the exception of unexplained periodic low growling. One of the lead professional explorers finds a room with a spiral staircase that is seemingly endless in which he wants to explore. Due to one of the crew members called Holloway Roberts losing his mind and chasing after a supposed beast he hears (related to the low growling) disaster hits as one of the other explorers dies due to Holloway mistaking him with the beast, in confusion he then decides to kill all the other members of the expedition. Will Navidson realising the crew is overdue for returning as well as hearing a tapping noise through the walls decoded as an SOS signal (even though the crew should be miles away from the house and the crew member tapping on the wall not even remembering tapping an SOS signal as just tapping) Will his brother and professor go into the hall to try and rescue the explorers. Again the architecture of the house transforms throughout their rescue mission the spiral staircase the crew was down changing in length (the stairs being much shorter now), as Will, his brother and professor find the crew Holloway also finds them killing another explorer before Will having taken a gun fires back at him. Holloway is seemingly swallowed by the house as the last surviving explorer and the body of the dead explorer is rescued by Will's brother who was too scared to go down the staircase and instead throws down a rope, as most people get out of the spiral staircase it suddenly explodes in length to longer its original size and Will Navidson is left at the bottom to make his way back up. Will also finds Holloway's gear with a recording showing he shot himself confirming Holloway is dead and also as a reminder all the footage is shown in a film. It takes several days for Will to climb back up the staircase, the police are called after the incident involving the deaths of the explorers in which the case was written off as a hunting accident due to the investigator being horrified from exploring the hallway for only a few minutes. Once Will is back everyone decides that they need to leave the house, but unfortunately as they are packing the house begins to change so instead of the hallway being dangerous the whole house is, everyone makes it out instead of Will's brother and Will's daughter, in which the daughter makes it out safely as Will's brother carries her out of the kitchen window but Will's brother dies as his arms are crushed by the kitchen walls and he gets sucked into the floor.
The end of the Navidson Record is Karen Will's wife turning to film making to try and reconcile her relationship with Will while also showing his footage to literary, artistic, and scientific authorities that do exist in real life outside of the whole book. Meanwhile Will Navidson is still investigating the house, finding that the samples taken from the hallway maze are older than the Earth itself. Navidson goes back into the house by himself being fully equipped with gear including a bike, at first the house seemingly helps him with the floor tilting as he rides his bike so he is forever going downhill however eventually he gets lost and the house takes all his gear except for what he is wearing. He sleeps before he finds a window and ends up on a window sill surrounded by pure darkness, he tries to read a book by lighting the pages on fire. At the same time Karen moves into the house again, at some points hearing him through the walls. The Navidson Record Part of the book ends when Karen blacks out and wakes up in the front yard with Will in her arms who is close to death from hyperthermia, having several injuries from frostbite and he recovers. The Navidson Record movie's release is the last point of the book that Zampanò put together.
House of Leaves - Truant's Footnotes & The Whalestoe Letters
The rest of the House of Leaves is a collection of compiled footnotes and letters from Johnny Truant and Truant's mother. I'm going to explain these sections of the book as well, though in a simpler shorter summary, as I still think some of the themes and topics covered are relevant to my research.
Johnny Truant is the editor for Zampanò's book as he is the one who found the pages in Zampanò's apartment, after reading he was dramatically affected and moved by Zampanò's book that he loses his job and is homeless, wandering through the streets as he documents footnotes that are not a part of the original House of Leaves book. These footnotes parallel the descent of madness of the Navidson records as Truant himself gets consumed by obsessions and delusions. Truant records some explicit and traumatizing encounters, following that he writes about his childhood and his abusive foster father. His mental health becomes more increasingly unstable before his story ends with a whole chapter written by Truant with the most notable section being a page where he writes about getting better and seeing doctors only for him a page later to reveal it was all made up and he's not getting better and will never be better. Another notable thing is how he recounts memories with his mother paralleling and sometimes completely contrasting with the Whalestoe Letters; what is true is that Truant's mother Pelafina is in a mental hospital. Truant ends the chapter by describing how he recounts burning his edited version of the House of Leaves before telling an ambiguous story about a woman losing her baby in childbirth at the viewpoint of the non existent doctor Truant said was helping him earlier.
Some third party editors collect all the material for the House of Leaves, putting it all in one book including letters from Pelafina from when she was in the asylum. She was sent to the institution after an attempt to strangle Johnny, and by the recounts from the letters and the footnotes it is unclear whether Truant's mother meant harm or not as Johnny says she only did it to stop him from missing her. In the beginning, in the letters she is very kind and sweet to Johnny to the point where she believes he can do no wrong, but eventually she says she will stop taking her medication and within the letters she is shown as paranoid and schizophrenic. She says that the institution is trying to do terrible things to her and how she needs to escape, going back to how she tried to kill Johnny as a child and saying how she wished it worked to relieve him of the pain of existence. Her writing becomes more manic before they put her on medication again, before admitting she is taken care of this is good for her. Documents from the mental institute reveal that her health is declining rapidly It is clear that both Pelafina Truant and Johnny Truant are mentally unstable and it is unclear if anything Johnny has said is in fact factual.
House of Leaves - Short analysis
Even though I haven't read the House of Leaves and therefore can't analysis it properly (which is a shame and if I had enough time I would read it and do a better analysis) I still think from the summaries I've read about the book and how its a book formatted with a main novel story and sections of letters and important footnotes I can still make an interesting perspective about the book as well as connect it to my project and inspire and detail some parts of my story.
I think the part that most interested me were the mysterious horror-like setting of the house and how many parts of the Navidson Record parallel Truant's footnote and the Whalestoe letters. The house can obviously be interpreted in a lot of different ways, but obviously I would like to analyze how it reflects being consumed by emotions. Will Navidson is shown to have an obsession with his career to the extent that he is unmarried to his wife Karen and have a rocky relationship, as the house seemingly targets Will; the spiral staircase getting deeper during the rescue leaving only him at the bottom as well as when he goes back to ventures into the house leaving Karen unaffected as she also visits the house in the last sections of the Navidson Record, it seems that the house can be symbolism for Will Navidson's obsession over his photography and his guilt for not looking after his family. It is hinted that he is slightly unstable by the fact he puts cameras everywhere in the house when they first move in, so the house trying to consume him representing obsession isn't a stretch. I like how each character depending on their mental state gets consumed by the house for example Holloway gets lost in the hallways as the house changes as he clearly exhibits a declining mental health rate as he chases a supposed beast and how Navidson brother gets sucked into the floor, previously mentioning how he was a failure and underachiever compared to Will and how he was a recovering alcoholic, in my eyes giving him and Will Navidson a goodbye before he died. I also like how contrasting the house can be, being unforgiving, ominous, but also seemingly helpful at times. It portrays how emotions are very wild and unpredictable, especially those who are mentally unwell or unstable. I think the house helped Will Navidson get over his obsession (albeit a very harsh way) as he ends up looking after his family and making up with Karen.
Moving onto the footnotes and the letters, I think these are the most important parts of the book itself with the only reason I liked the Navidson Record more was because of the unique concept of the house. After looking at many analyses of the book one of my favourite theories is that Zampanò never really existed and the Navidson story as well as Zampanò as a character was written by Johnny Truant as an expression of his trauma with his childhood. Truant is shown to be an incredibly unreliable narrator, with the fact it’s hinted that he could also have the same mental issues as his mother did. There are a lot of parallels with the Navidson Record with footnotes he makes with his childhood; the five minute and a half hallway can be paralleled to the five minutes and a half time Johnny described his mother taking leave as Johnny and his father said goodbye to her in the mental institution (as it was a rough heartfelt goodbye) as well as him burning the pages of his version of the edited House of Leaves page by page just like Will Navidson did in the actual story. One story point that I didn't really go in depth that would be relevant to what I'm trying to research is the story of the minotaur and how Zampanò is struck with inside the writing, it is said the minotaur is the child of a king who built the labyrinth who threw his child in there so he didn't have to deal with it which can represent the beast Holloway hears in the hallway maze. This parallels a lot with Will Navidson and his neglect of his family but can also be interpreted as Johnny or Johnny's suppressed guilt and trauma with his family neglecting and abusing him.
Overall the House of Leaves seems to be a terrifying, confusing maze of a book in its story and how its formatted (again I will go over this later) and if I were to cover every idea of an analysis point I could have with the House of Leaves this section would be too long (and is honestly already a bit complex and lengthy) so to summarise what I got out of this analysis and how I'm going to implement it within my project; there is a lot of connections between being consumed by emotions like guilt and anxiety with themes of mental disorders and schizophrenia, so for my character I'm going to reinforce the idea that their journey or at least what they're seeing is a part of a delusion. Combining ideas from the War of Vaslav Nijinsky and from Johnny Truant's footnotes plus his mothers letters, the character the player plays should be written to show a health decline throughout the game but also hint at what caused them to have this deep seeded guilt; this part is undecided however it might be good to leave it as a mystery for speculation. Also as a plot device to keep the player going I want them to have the fear of the environment consuming them or swallowing them as a form of punishment where they will be dragged into hell or something worse (inspired by the Navidson Record when Will Navidson's brother was swallowed by the floor combined with my research on religious guilt and fear.) Lastly, inspired by Johnny being an unreliable narrator, I want the character to make us the player believe that the safe space is a bright wonderful and calming place by their inner monologue as well as seeing the safe space as a hallucination where it's warm and cosy while its actually decrepit and desolate.
My House.wad
My House.wad is a tribute Doom II map mod created by the user Veggde released in 2023. Veggde explains in the original post about how his friend Tom had passed away and that he found an old copy of an unfinished Doom map he made when Tom's parents reconnected with him and shared some of Tom's belongings. As a tribute Veggde cleaned up Tom's map and thus My House.wad was created, with Veggde saying the whole map has a run time of 10 minutes, a lie that becomes more obvious as you download the Myhouse.pk3 instead of the .wad. This mod has its own story with the creator of the mod also being a character within the story who has put up this façade for (as it seems) as long as the account has existed back in June 16, 2004, the mod is obviously inspired by House of Leaves while also having a puzzle like nature in terms of its story and in a way is a playable and much easier to digest adaption to HoL. This section will be a summary and analysis of the story and gameplay of My House.wad, however I will most likely do more research on the visual aspects of the game and how it uses the medium it uses to its advantage
My House.wad - Gameplay Summary
A playthrough of My house.wad varies from person to person but here I will explain the route most players go when exploring My house.WAD. I will in my best efforts explain but watching MyHouse.WAD - Inside Doom's Most Terrifying Mod by Power Pak after might be a better to clear up some things.
When clicking on the link leading to a google drive, there will be two files myhouse.wad and myhouse.pk3. My house.wad is the normal 10 minute version Veddge described in his posts, however the pk3 is a version that supposedly shouldn't be in the google drive according to Veddge in a journal found in the same google drive. When playing the pk3 everything seems to be normal just like the wad version, because this is a Doom mod you need to kill monsters and collect keys to finish the level, you will do a normal loop of the house which in an unsuspecting player's perspective will think is a cute tribute exploring rooms until you get to the downstairs basement, after defeating the monsters most players will notice the Soulsphere (which gives the player 200% health) outside the house sitting on a water reservoir. Instead of the player ending the level with the blue key card they might go to get that Soulsphere only to find it is gone and that when looking back into the windows of the house, all the monsters have seemingly respawned; this is the second House.
The second House is the same house but with different monsters inside, and most notably the key cards turning into skull variant keys, however after retrieving the final blue skull key the player will find that all the doors to the outside are gone. Depending on how observant the player is they will notice that the blue skull key was in an attic that didn't exist before as well as click on a covered object revealed to be a mirror. After checking the front doors of the house the player when going upstairs again will discover that an impossible room has appeared next to the master bedroom, the room contains a can of Pop the first artifact you can collect in the mod; picking it up will cause the text "I want pop" to appear in the top left of the screen, after picking it up you will find that an icon appears in a hanging picture in the house showing eight slots for these collectables. When you pick up the Pop a black-and-white Bauhaus styled room appears opposite the first appearing room with the second artifact a milkshake.
Ending 1 - SOLD
If the player after picking up the blue skull key and goes to the front of the house, they may hear a buzzing noise; when checking the downstairs basement a hidden room will appear behind an obscured bookshelf. The buzzing noise is from the breaker seemingly broken and as the player interacts with it everything goes dark. Screams are heard as the Doom music stops playing, as the player steps out of the room new monsters in the dark appear in the basement rooms. Going upstairs the player sees the remnants of the house burnt down under a gloomy red hellish sky, these layers of the house are also filled with monsters, you can collect three items in the section of the game but they don't count towards the icons as by this point the pictures are gone locking the player out from completing the artifact puzzle. Venturing back down to the basement again, the basement has changed with concrete walls with outside looking just as grey, going to the boiler room where the garage door used to be and interacting with the off-color wall; the player unlocks an entirely new section of the game.
This next area is called the Brutalist house, a featureless grey concrete walled section with liminal apartment complexes surrounding all sides. Also as it might not be obvious to the player, the main layout is the same for the original house, an occurring theme within the game. To get through this section the player must open the off coloured concrete walls until they find an exit, there are three artifacts in this area; Pumpkin Rick, a Frisbee and a Tuna Can. These cannot be obtained as the player has burned down the house, neither can any future artifacts mentioned in this Ending, however are relevant in different endings. There are two layers of this section, the top layer where the environment is smaller and the player is at regular height as well as a friendly dog in the main living room section, while the bottom layer is a scaled up version of the top layer with everything looking bigger including the dog who now has two heads and is violent. The player can drop down into the void between the apartment complexes and the house to leave, however this will take them to a looping staircase with different doors that will eventually lead back to the burnt out house. The real exit to get to the next section would be to pass through all the confusing physically impossible hallways, dropping down at least once in a hole before opening an electricity panel to get to an infinitely-looping parking lot.
After going through the door of the infinite parking lot, the player will go up an escalator to find themselves in an airport. There is one artifact here to collect if the player took a route that didn't require burning the house, which is a pill bottle found when going into the female bathroom, looping around the mirror in which blood stains will appear on the other side, defeat all the monsters that will spawn with a full loop and finding the bottle at the entrance. The player then must board the plane, after triggering the front controls of the ship monsters will appear, the player can either kill these monsters or run to the tail end of the plane. The exit to this section is to jump out of the plane out of the hatch which the player will fall into until they land into an overgrown abandoned version of the house.
This is the final section of the Ending 1 route, the house now abandoned from the house fire is now overgrown with plants and vegetation. The sky has returned to normal and the front doors that disappeared at the start are now back, as the player still has the blue skull key to unlock the gate to the games finish teleport the play can finally exit the house, only to turn around to see the sign "SOLD - Navidson Realty For Sale" with the house completely gone. The player then can leave and go to the next level of the normal doom game Underhalls.
Ending 2 - Fake True Ending
As I've said in the mod there are a total of 8 artifacts according to the icon slots in the house's painting, however if the player ignores the buzzing and does not trigger the breaker the player can still collect the artifacts allowing them to get ending 2 and 3. As said, if the player triggers the mirror in the attic, in one of the bathrooms the player can walk up the toilet and onto the counter to reach the mirror; walking through gets you to the mirror reality. It is a reversed blue tinted version of the house revealing that there are 16 artifacts to be collected as there is an alternate version of the hanging picture icons on the wall with its own set of icons. You can collect an artifact in the mirror world kitchen, a one bottle to start off. From the normal reality if you looked into the mirror in the attic there would be an artifact lying under a window, you can collect this artifact in the mirror world. In the mirror attic there is also a Milk bottle artitfact in a crib. When returning through the same bathroom mirror there will be a trail of ball pit balls leading to the downstairs basement, following them will lead you to a closet with the floor broken in revealing a dark tunnel slide, going down will lead you to a new section; the Daycare.
The Daycare has the same layout as the basement in the house, most notably having classrooms and two artifacts; Baseball and Crayon. There is also a picture of Shrek on the wall to the left when you first enter this section from the slide, coming back from collecting the artifacts Shrek will be gone from the wall, it is only when returning to one of the classrooms a door to the outside will be open. Outside is a foggy dark playground area where the player needs to kill a shadowed silhouette of Shrek who will be chasing and attacking them, the player needs to also pick up the teddy bear artifact left on the swing. After killing Shrek he will drop a key to the front gate, opening it and going through will lead you back to the house.
The next area the player will probably reach will be the bath house, filling up all the sinks in the house including in the Bauhaus house will cause the water in the bathtub to gradually rise. When the bathtub is fully filled you can collect the rubber duck artifact sitting on the water, however when stepping into the water the player will sink, resurfacing from going all the way to the bottom will reveal the normal house flooded with water. Going back to the basement floor it is more foggy, after exploring all the basement rooms a looping hallway will appear, if the player loops a few times they will be transported to the bath house. The bath house is a foggy water filled section which the player must navigate through confusing impossible hallways, showers and locker rooms to find the main pool. In the main pool on one of the black tiles is a D20 dice, you must evade the fish monster in the pool as you need to swim down a fake black tile and get through the underwater maze. Killing the fish is an option but it will spawn a lot of tinier harder to hit fish costing a lot of your ammo. The player needs to navigate the underwater maze without drowning, if the player manages to get to the end the player will end up in the garage version of the bathhouse with a disconnected bridge stemming to the next area.
The bridge is surrounded by monsters and a sky box, if the player were to fall off the bridge they would end up in the sky room connected to the looping staircase, which would be a whole setback in progress. About half way on the bridge there is an invisible walkway leading to an artifact, a wedding ring. Stepping on the black tile in the middle of the bridge will also spawn monsters so after collecting that artifact the player must run to the other side of the bridge where a concrete wall will close behind them, this will cause them to end up in the grey concrete walled Brutalist house.
The player then must collect the artifacts explained previously in the Brutalist and Airport section before returning to the house , if the player manages to collect less than 15 artifcats before dropping from the plane back to the house, the house will appear empty and walking outside will cause Ending 1. If the player manages to get everything then in the normal house when checking the painting in the living room will reveal a secret entrance in the fence outside. The doors to the outside have reappeared at this point so the player can go outside and investigate.
The fence entrance leads to a silent dark empty road that loops, eventually the player while following the road will come across a crashed car; interestingly it will be playing the song Subways Of Your Mind previously known as the most mysterious song on the internet as no one knew who made it or the actual title of the song until recently after a 17 year long search. Going past the car out of the forest tree line the player will come across a gas station where you will collect the last artifact the Game Controller inside the gas station, following a trail of blood and going into the restroom will take you back to the house's bathroom. From here the player will need to go into the mirror world having collected all the artifcats.
Just like the normal house, the mirror house's picture will give you a clue on where to go, and just like the normal world there will be an entrance in the fence. Again everything is flipped so going through the fence you will have to go the opposite way to go where the car crash would have been, but instead of the car being there, a flashlight points in the direction of the gas station in which the car is parked outside. You cannot go into the gas station through the front door this time as it is blocked off using police tape, looking inside there is a lot of blood indicating a crime scene. However you can enter through the back, giving you a rocket launcher in the back room. The gas station is not important however as indicated in the mirror world picture, therefore the player must go down the road connecting to the gas station to end up at the last location leading to this run's ending.
The player must go up to the sign shown in the mirror world picture. Through the blue tint of the mirror world you will be able to see dark smoke coming from somewhere in between the trees. By going down the road next to the sign and reaching a small entrance in the shrubbery reveals it was a campfire. Looking around you will find a tree with the symbol "S+A" surrounded by a heart on it; clicking it will summon a Mirror Vile as the tree reveals an entrance. Going through this entrance is one way as you cannot go back once, the player will be on a dull beach with a white sky surrounded by fake cardboard cutouts of trees and bushes with a fake sea. Slipping behind the cardboard cutouts, you will find a table with a clapper board interacting with it will snap it shut and make your screen turn black; this is ending 2. You will not be able to return unless you reload a save file.
We know this is the fake ending as in the entire mod there is one secret, which is the true ending. Also this ending directly mirrors the true ending signifying how it is indeed fake.
Ending 3 - True Ending
Instead of going to the fake beach, the player needs to run back to the mirror house after the Mirror Vile is triggered, the mirror vile is not killable. When going through the bathroom mirror to the normal world there will be a normal arch vile that you need to kill before it revives too many enemies. Outside is worse however as there are hordes of monsters, as well as loads of ammo reloads. The player must get to the gas station in the original world; arriving at the car there will also be loads of ammo to prepare for the final fight.
The final fight is at the gas station, tons of monsters of different types surround the station as well as the road leading to the campfire. The player must now kill all or most of these monsters for the satisfying ending, by running around dodging attacks, the player can also go into the station and by interacting with the drink machine they will get 200% health. Getting to the campfire and going through the already open tree entrance will lead to the true ending on the real beach with the "S+A" heart symbol written in the sand. if the player didn't kill the dog in the brutalist house then the friendly version will be there sleeping on the beach as well. Pressing a hidden switch while facing the entrance, a few steps away from the dog, triggers the intermission screen.
My House.wad - Other Content
The Journal - Analysis
With the mod comes the journal inside the same Google Drive, a journal seemingly written by Steve Nelson who is presumably also Veddge. The journal describes the development of the Doom mod while also documenting his dreams. Further along the journal up until the actual release Veddge's health seems to decline as shown by what these dreams are about and how the game is described to change on its own.
The dreams are key to discovering what to do in the actual game, from Veddge drowning in his bathtub only to swimming up into a demon-filled cave reflecting the bath house. In another entry he describes crashing his car into a tree and finding a gas station, another detailing how he was on a plane and had to jump out as it was starting to shake. I think all of these entries are important to discovering the true narrative of the mod, but I would like to look at a few specific ones and analyse them because of the existential dread that comes from some of these as well as finding the story and concepts written interesting. They are also essential to the actual narrative trying to be told that I will explain after this section.
Later in the journal, Veddge describes a dream in which he is shaving and discovers the mirror world, he portrays this as if it was something real that happened but at the end says he woke up as if it was a dream. He describes seeing his reflection wink at him and then throwing his razor at the mirror out of shock, only for it to go through the mirror. He then climbs through the mirror and feels strangely at peace; this could represent how people going through hardships, like how Veddge is dealing with the death of Tom, would be comforted being delusional in a false reality where everything is fine. However, doing this and not accepting reality would be unhealthy, normally leading to that person's self destruction as the weight of the real reality crashes down on them. In the next entries we see the consequence of living in the fake reality.
This entry describes the Fake Ending. I like this entry because of the message behind it as well as the formatting seemingly melding the dates throughout the whole story. The entry builds off of the last entry I touched upon, adding a philosophical theme of the value of life, where he stayed in the mirror world, an untrue version of reality he let himself lose in. The result ending in false happiness, left alone with memories of a life that was once his in infinite time. The message of how "Happiness has to be fought for" is a very true and strong sentiment reflected in the final fight leading to the True ending on the real beach, how he wishes he was the version of himself that was truly happy as that version of him was the one that fought for it. I like the fact that the fake beach version of himself stays on the beach for eternity, as it seems inhuman to earn happiness without doing anything in return. I also like the comparisons he makes about being in a show explaining the clapper board and almost set design looking cardboard cutouts reinforcing how fake it all really is. There is a story explaining why he has these dreams though the events of what actually happened with Veddge and Tom are mostly speculation and theories with evidence from the game and Journal pieced together, I will explain my favorite theory on the mod later.
Lastly, these entries written before the last ones I talked about are about Valentines and the discovery of the map changing itself. I think the first entry is sweet but has very sad connotations to it. Veddge wishes the only person he ever loved a Happy Valentines, seeming to convey how they are gone or dead, and how he wishes to fill the void that they left with someone else. The next entry is about him finding out the game is changing seemingly by itself, there are loads of theories of why this happens to Tom reaching beyond the grave to change the game to Veddge's other self in the mirror reality changing it. Names are hardly mentioned in the journal hence why I said Veddge "presumably" wrote the journal, we don't know who is being talked about in this Valentines entry as it directly addresses the person he loves however the entry directly after mentions Thomas. I find it interesting that these two entries might be possibly linked as the theory I saw that I liked the most was that Thomas was Veddge's partner, in this entry Thomas responding to the Valentines message could have changed the map somehow as a way to thank Veddge; the reason why he finds the changes so beautiful.
Pictures & Drawings
The Google Drive also has a collection of drawings and images that symbolize different parts of the Doom mod like the bad dog in the Brutalist maze as a drawing as well as pictures of the Gas station and other areas of the house map. The main purpose of these is to hint at the story between Thomas and Veddge/ Steve as well as draw an uncanny connection to the game to real life as we see parts of the Doom Map like the impossible hallway in some of the photos.
My House.wad - Story Interpretation
My House.wad does not have a definitive story, only the snippets and clues given in the journal, sketchbook, pictures and the game itself. There are theories about what actually happened behind the scenes, however a very important clue was found in the game; when collecting all the artifacts are collected but the player still burns the house down. By checking the fence the hidden entrance will still be there after the house disappears in the normal Ending 1, in place of the road there will be a gravestone with a QR c0de, scanning it will lead to an extended image of the page with Tom's obituary showing another with Steven Nelson, Steve who died on the exact same day.
This brings up a whole new set of questions; was it really Steve behind the account Veddge, was he the one who wrote the journal, how could he have done all of this if he was already dead? Again, there is no straight answer as after all one of the main inspirations of this Doom mod is House of Leaves. The game makes it really obvious
that it was inspired by the House of Leaves to the Navidson Realty sign in Ending 1 to the five and a half minute hallway being an easter egg; that if you open one of the rooms closet doors a certain amount of times it will open to the dark dreary hallway described in the Navidson Record. There is nothing in the hallway regarding the story of My House.wad, however, it does strengthen the connection between the mod and the book. In the Navidson Record, one of the main focuses is the connection between two people Will Navidson and Karen Green. It made me think that maybe the games heavy referencing to HoL could
be a hint to what to look out in Steven's and Thomas's relationship and how it plays a part in this story. There is a part of the game that I should mention, the True ending with the heart symbol in the sand and "S + A" written inside of it. We can deduce that the "S" is obviously Steve, if he really did write the journal then he was the one talking about his true self on the beach where "life is finite" and "happiness needs to be fought for." Though there are no mentions of a person's name beginning with "A", not even other relevant people mentioned other than Thomas; Thomas Allord. He's the only one with an A starting name and really the only close connection that Steve mentions, it's also strange how the obituaries perfectly line up with each other as both Steve and Tom grew up in Plano with both moving to Oswego with unmentioned partners. They also don't survive by any spouse despite having both married or having a partner while also having the same celebration of life service at the same place and time, therefore it could be that Tom and Steve were married or at least in love. The game and journal hint to a rough childhood too; the rundown daycare with Shrek in it also referred to as a childhood nightmare, the burnt down house with seemingly children screaming in the background and the giant bad dog in the Brualist maze maybe reflecting a fear of dogs Steve or Tom had when they were young, these being an explanation as to how the two grew close. I could be right on point or very far off but it still remains a mystery to how the mod was even made if Steve was already dead, while that could forever remain a mystery (unless the actual creator confirms it) I think that the most important thing that we could take away from the story is that no matter how awful and horrible life can be, there will always be that one small light that keeps us going; fighting for true happiness.
My House.wad & HoL Reflection
Now is my game going to be as in depth and well thought out as House of Leaves or My House.wad? To put it simply no; these two sources took years to make with how deep the story telling and writing goes and it would be impossible to make something with similar value in a span of a few months. However, I can take inspiration from these two sources to make the storytelling of my game better, and even though I will probably have to simplify the game now doesn't mean I can't build off of it in the future, just like Steve did with Tom's map. I also need consider how my perception of specifically House of Leaves is obscured due to me not actually reading the book, despite my lack of knowledge on the details in House of Leaves, I still think my research was thorough and interesting leading to new perceptive I've had about storytelling and how parallels can be very good to connect seemingly different scenarios together. My House.wad showed me that even as confusing of a book HoL is that it can be adapted fantastically into something as absurd as a Doom mod, that really there is almost no dialogue in the game and even without looking into the journal that much it can be very entertaining finding all these areas and sections of the house to find that on secret. The journal is also like a mini version of Johnny Truant's footnotes in a sense, Steve spiralling as he realises changes in the game and his dreams getting more terrifying; you could also say the journal is another parallel to the House of Leaves footnotes. Overall House of Leaves and My House.wad are two very similar but also vastly different stories, it's guaranteed I'm missing or haven't mentioned something about these two sources as it's impossible to cover absolutely everything with how much content both of these pieces of media hide and obscure. However, I still enjoyed researching these two, every time I looked deeper into something there would be something that would lead me deeper, I want to try and recreate that with my game somehow which I will talk about next.
Current Story Plan
To start finalising my story plan I will combine all my research about Guilt, The War of Vaslav Nijinsky, House of Leaves and My House.wad; first of all based on My House being made in a first person engine I think I'm going to also make the story first person as it's the easiest way of literally putting yourself in someone else's shoes, by doing this the person playing will hopefully build a stronger connection to the main character they are playing as in the game so they question about their mental state and their backstory. I think the identity of most characters will be anonymous or blank, especially the character the player will play as so it's easier for the player to project themselves onto that character. As I said the first plan of the story the main character I will now be calling the MC will be at a party, the MC will be portrayed as being overwhelmed by hints that we get from interacting with other characters and interactions with objects, these objects will have pop up text similar to how each artifact in My House.wad has one whenever you pick it up. With my rough plan I didn't know what the source of the MC's guilt would come from, there is a recurring theme with The War of Vaslav Nijinsky, House of Leaves and My House.wad that everything stems from a relationship between two people: Vaslav Nijinsky and Sergei Diaghilev, Will Navidson and Karen Green, Johnny Truant and his mother, Steven Nelson and Thomas Allord. Some of these relationships end poorly while others improve, some are left neutral with the loose ends untied forever, however it is certain that a hardship between two close people is a catalyst for the cycle of guilt, and therefore I will include it in my game.
To expand on this idea, and taking inspiration from the main quote I looked at from The War of Nijinsky, I think the incident that might have started this cycle of guilt would be an accident in the snow, which would allow me to also build off of a unique snow environment. It would also allow me to tie everything back to consumption as if this MC character is reminded of their guilt because the snow I think that by having it all around them almost consuming them would be a great way to showcase their emotions. At different parts of the game whenever they are reminded of positive memories of the person they were close with the snow is light, but if they are near the area of the accident or are reminded of it the snow fall becomes heavier and the amount on the ground deeper as if they are sinking in regret. For the actual accident, just from thinking of ideas I think an accident involving skating on ice would work, maybe this person died falling into unstable ice on a lake and the reason they were there is because of the MC. Imagining ideas from this scenario and trying to tie them into consumption also gave me another idea, climate change is a major part of consumption as its a result of consuming fossil fuels and creating gas, as a secret cutscene or a flashback maybe the MC and their special person had a tradition of ice skating on a specific late, but because of temperatures rising the ice lake had become unstable and the ice more fragile, with the other person suggesting they shouldn't go this time because of the risks. The MC could have ignored this warning and encouraged them to skate anyway leading to their death. It would also explain why the MC is directly guilty. Now that I have a good plan for the backstory, I need to plan the events of the game and if I want different endings like My house.wad, I think if I have more time in the future to build on this game I think I ill add a second ending, but for now I will focus on the first which will be the MC's cycle of grief and guilt.
The way I'd imagine the MC's guilt to be portrayed is by combining the responses from my survey, though I will cover the characters more extensively later during development, I feel like the MC would have music as something to calm them down with (it would also be good to experiment with music since I did mention it in my project proposal.) I also briefly looked into how music affects the brain, and it affects a lot of things like emotions and cognitive functioning depending on the person and what music they are listening too. Music can also be a way of treating neurological disorders, though I feel that by making the music slightly disturbing and uncomfortable, it would be more reflective of the deterioration of MC's health.
Equilibrium
The first moments of the game would be the party which is probably celebrating a relative or MC's parent; to greatly impact and foreshadow what's to come different interactions with different characters would hint at what MC has done, some characters will be more sympathetic with the MC but some will be quite cold towards them due to them probably admitting in the past that they were the ones to lead them to the lake. The MC seems slightly distraught as they overhear the mentions of the snow getting heavier that night as well as mentions of more people getting caught in mini avalanches around the edge of town. The MC's parents go off in their car, explaining that there's a shortage of alcohol and they will be back. This gets MC even more anxious as they are left alone with mostly strangers.
Disruption
As said a small accident will cause MC to retreat to their room, maybe this incident parallels the accident with MC's special person falling into the lake. I said that it would probably be because of the MC spilling food on another party member, though I think it would be more fitting for the MC to accidentally push a person over. The MC decides to sneak out and go to their "Safe Place" which I might rename in the future, the Safe Place is a small but cozy looking hut far in the distance seen in MC's window and thus starting the journey of the game.
The forest is much more hostile, with the snow getting more prominent closer to the Safe Place and the lake. There is a path the MC must follow marked by symbols carved on the trees, presumably by the MC; these symbols represent the MC special person. In the forest there are different off-path sections the MC must take as the path they usually take is blocked off somehow, probably by a giant fallen tree with the symbol carved into it pointing in a certain direction. It leads to a hole in a snow wall, as the MC enters the MP3 player is dropped directly into the wet snow causing it to glitch and stop playing music, the MC obviously terrified tries to go back but the MC is reminded of the Safe Place and keeps going. After trekking further into the hole in the wall the size of the cavern gets smaller, suddenly the MC is reminded of the accident and the hole starts to collapse, the hole gets tinier and tinier before the MC makes it safe at the other side revealing the collapsed in snow wall being only a few feet wide impossible of harbouring a full on tunnel, a reference to the five minute hallway. The collapsing of the tunnel will also be a parallel of being consumed emotionally and literally, maybe in visuals I will go as far as making the tunnel replicate someone's inner organs.
Repair
The last challenge is the lake itself, the MC is clearly confused in this section as they don't remember the Safe Place being across from it, nevertheless the MC is very close to the Safe Place and to get there they need to cross their greatest fear. Now the Safe Place is revealed to be a small cabin with warm orange light spilling from the windows, if the player notices the cabin Amy seems artificial like a picture of a warm cabin stuck on an environment of a desolate forest. Finding the motivation by remembering the words of one of the party members, the MC preps themselves before stepping onto the ice lake though they have to be careful with their stepping. With each step closer to the middle the snow pouring down gets harsher, when suddenly the MC sees the frozen over accessory the special person wore, (looking back on the story now I think I'm going to make this accessory a flower) a rumbling can be heard from all sides of the lake. To show the derealisation and dread the MC feels instead of having a simple avalanche I want the whole environment to uproot itself, a collapse onto itself surrounding the MC like their world is going to eat them for their greatest mistake. I will do some concept art to really detail this later as I feel this will be one of the most thrilling and terrifying parts of the game.
New Equilibrium
The games cuts to a cutscene of the MC inside the Safe Place, the place seems warm and inviting and almost bigger than it seems outside, after the MC remembers one last thing the cabin glitches into what it really is, it's a small empty place, with one chair and one small warm light in the middle of the room (inspired by My House.wad and the small light of happiness Steve found in Tom). Under the chair is a small box wrapped up in a blanket, the blanket is only for the box and not the MC, the box contains the flower hair clip MC's special person wore before they fell into the lake and that the one frozen over in the lake is MC's. The MC sulks and cries as they hold the box, the walls closing in as the game cuts to MC climbing into their room again, the ending is the MC's parents checking up on them saying how it looks like they've been crying. The MC decides to go to bed with the final cutscene zooming out of the window revealing the cabin to be as close to the MC's house as to be in their backyard, questioning if the journey was ever real in the first place.
Disequilibrium
The Journey will consist of three parts, the town, the forest and the lake; The town will be an eerie almost empty space with the MC needing to go get something they hid in their mother or father's car, but because they went to go get more alcohol for the party the car is somewhere parked around town and the MC must find the shop they are parked at. To symbolize the first waves of guilt washing over MC the whole environment will be used against them in the form of some sort of a snow wave that rushes all over the town, the MC must avoid these by hiding in different building crevices as well as navigating the maze like town to get to the car. It is only revealed that this important object is a MP3 player and some headphones (inspired by the survey and how many people cope with overwhelming emotions with music, as well as how I own an MP3 player) and that the MC absolutely refuses to go into the forest without them. This is supposed to show hints of the unreliability of the MC and how they are unwell due to the wave of snow the MC doesn't actually see as in the game I plan that you hear it but don't actually see it. I also plan that by the end of the game it is revealed the waves of snow will actually be cars passing on the road, this takes inspiration from the schizophrenia like affects people like Vaslav Nijinsky and Johnny Truants suffer from, which will be further showcased by the MC's obsession with the Safe Place.
Contextual Research Evaluation
Project Proposal Comparison
In my project proposal I talk about my previous work and state how my Narrative Design project was my favourite project to work on. I feel this reflects on this project shown by my extensive research on House of Leaves and My.house.wad. Also, looking over my previous projects I have realised how much I focus on character design and narrative, and will try and challenge myself by focusing on environments in my visual research. Finally I think I’m reaching the goals of using mediums outside of digital to inspire my work like The War of Vaslav Nijinsky and the House of Leaves which in turn will help my goal of combining 2D and 3D elements since I’m reaching out to other mediums.
Time Management
By now I have about 2 to 3 months to finish the project meaning I’m about 4 - 5 weeks into the project. Looking at my timetable I’m glad to say that I’m in a good spot in terms of what work or research I have accomplished. Since I have already planned to visually research House Of Leaves and MyHouse.wad, hopefully that will make this section faster so I can move onto developing quicker.
Quality of Work
Overall I think I did a good job of making a unique story that still fits into consumption, though I do think some parts of my research are a bit long. Even though some parts of my research could be hard to read I still think that my research is relevant and interesting, reflecting on the narrative outcome I think I also applied my research and explained how it has affected my work while still being relevant to the theme.
Target Audience
Before I start my visual research I would like to figure out the target demographic for this game now that I have the basic plot of the game. What I'm aiming to make is a small horror game presented through a walking simulator type game, it will have slightly disturbing themes of death, and guilt as well as slightly unsettling disturbing visuals.
I think the primary audience for my game will be mostly older audiences (around the age of 20), mainly people interested in psychological horror games, who are willing to play a game that is mostly story based then game mechanic based. There has also been an increase of physiological horror games in recent years meaning there is now a higher demand for them. I can also aim to reach people who relate with the themes of being consumed by emotions, since a game that will relate to them will resonate more if executed right.
For my secondary target audience, I think I’ll be aiming for a slightly younger audience over around ages 14 that are trying to discover more mature levels of horror. I know that my game won’t feature anything gory, and will only have disturbing themes that are only discovered through game analysis and some visual aspects of the game.
To adapt to my target audience I will in the future have to think about the game engine and accessibility of the game, as well as its rating.
Visual Research
Environment Inspiration - Survey
For my visuals, I had already decided on my snowy landscape during my story plan, however because I don't live in a particularly snowy area and don't plan on visiting one soon I would have to find photos that other people have taken in snowy landscapes. Earlier when I was researching the War of Vaslav Nijinsky I was already considering making the game in a snow environment so while I made the survey, I started thinking about what could
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inspire any visuals for my game from what I've looked at so far so I could pre-plan what exactly I wanted to research for visuals. Mainly my attention was drawn to the quote "I lay back down in the snow" as it made me think about a snowy environment. Before I finished making my survey, I picked out a couple of images that were in snowy environments that were eerie and unsettling, asking which ones gave people the most anxiety.
According to most responders number 7 gave them the most anxiety, furthering this I asked to describe any particular environments that make them uncomfortable or give them anxiety and many described dark and abandoned places. This also lines up with the cabin concept I planned at the end of the game.
The most voted for image 7. can be used as inspiration for the forest section while the second most voted image 3. can be used for the town, I also find the square blocky buildings a bit unsettling as it resembles a brutalist architecture while the entire image is bleak and cold. By making every location a bit uncanny at the start of the game it might prepare the player to think that something is off with the environment as a whole, hinting to the fact that the journey isn't real. I plan to give the forest the same creepy unsettling feel, I think I will do this by making the forest either very open or claustrophobic, when I make my concept art I will do a few tree iterations symbolising the trees almost enclosing in on the MC's path. I will also make concept art with the town's buildings as well as make a map for the town and the forest.
I think going for a snow environment for the game is the best approach not only story wise but also visually, with the one other idea being a pillow fort I think it wasn't an idea I could expand of that much, especially since a lot of horror games uses the trope of "Thing for children turned into a twisted nightmare" and even though I haven't seen many games centred around a pillow fort I still think it wouldn't have made sense due to my research as well as not conveyed the journey of a mentally ill person well. I also don't see many games focus on specifically liminal uncanny snow environments, even though I think these buildings and structures make for a really unsettling feeling. I would love to try and recreate these environments in a game, and try to recreate the unsettling feeling that comes with it.
Now that I have inspiration for the forest and town I will now have to get inspiration for the party, the store (where the parent's car is parked), the lake and the cabin. I do have some clear ideas for some of these locations but regardless I would like to find some photos to really visualise what each location will look like. I'm also doing this since I won't have enough time to do concept art in every single location, the concept art will also double as promotional material for people to play my game. However, because I don't live in a snowy environment most of the pictures will be taken from the internet, but just because I don't live in a snowy area doesn't mean I can't use my own photos as inspiration for things like the cabin or the forest. Recently I visited a museum that featured a lot of old buildings. I took some pictures of some small hut-like structures for inspiration for the cabin, or the desirable cabin the MC hallucinated. I like the chimney and the thatched roofs of some of these houses, by giving the cabin more differences and features that are noticeable I think seeing the inner cabin being so empty with no sign of there being a chimney or any other exterior details like windows I think it would reinforce the fact that the MC is hallucinating..
Environment Inspiration -Mood boards
To start planning the concept art for the game, I wanted to make some mood boards for some of the locations; I didn't want to spend too much time making the mood boards therefore I tried to make two for the first sections of the game.
The party taking place at the MC's house would be a contrast to the rest of the game, therefore I thought of colourful lights and messy decorations. I liked the idea of having the lights in this part dim to still make the game slightly ominous even at the start to build the dread of what's to come. Having unnatural lighting can also be used to make the atmosphere more eerie depending how it's used, in - game I think I'm going to use the inspiration from the green bathroom image and use that lighting in the MC's bedroom as a contrast to the party's purple lighting.
The directions should be messy with things like cups, bottles and balloons scattered everywhere, therefore if I don't manage to make enough NPC's to fill the party I can still make a stressful and cluttered environment to recreate that feeling. With the overall layout of MC's home I'm going to make it small like an apartment, this is a good idea since it fuels the idea of it being crowded with a lot of people being in a small space and for the development process so that I don't have to fill up a giant space.
The town will be the next location visited after leaving the party, to set the mood to be eerie and discomforting. I plan to make the town foggy and desolate with traces of human life but no actual sign of it. This should make the player feel alone and vulnerable. The streets themselves should feel like a maze that the player has to navigate, the street must be open enough to feel uncanny and unsettling while also being closed off enough to feel trapped when the blizzard snow wave hurtles towards the player in the game. Starting at the level of the town there should be a TV shop or a radio on a car hinting at this blizzard suggesting to seek shelter. For the store itself I would like to think it would stand out with the lighting that would come from inside.
Stylisation inspiration
As I was making these mood boards I was thinking about the stylisation of the game, I think having the game be on the more realistic style would be good contrast to the hallucinations the MC sees in the game, I just need a way to present these hallucinations to gradually stand out from the realistic setting of the game. This is where House of Leaves and My House.wad comes in visually.
One of the main reasons House of Leaves is so confusing and hard to read is because of the way it's formatted, the words on the page are shaped into puzzles themselves, the reader having to decipher both the narrative and the way to process the information on the page to make sense. This formatting reflects the nature of the House as well as the mental decay the characters have in the book; by getting even more cryptic and messy as the text continues which might be frustrating for some readers. Even with the confusing, disorientating structures of the pages the format is what makes the book stand out from others in the first place as it catches the reader off guard by breaking the general presentation standards of a book. It also isn't just there to look interesting, as all this formatting was planned over the many years the book was being made, meaning all the strange black boxes, overlaid text on text and words going sideways on the pages probably symbolises and reflects what's happening in the text itself.
Even the cover uses symbolism, by the fact the cover of the book is smaller than the actual book itself, a reflection of the house being bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Details like this surprise the reader the further they understand the book, the realisation of something being symbolism all along makes the book much more fascinating.
My House.wad also uses the concept of breaking the general format by breaking the game mechanics of Doom II. Most people that play My House.wad are experienced Doom II players and therefore know and are familiar with Doom II mechanics. For example, the start of My House.wad is pretty normal, it's a recreational level that features a house filled with monsters and you need to get the key cards to open the gate. However from the get go My House slowly eases in dread and uncertainty such as putting something as simple as a floor under another floor; in Doom II all elevations and downstairs areas are separate from the main building as the world is generated via a 2D map, therefore making layers is impossible. Just by having a downstairs basement floor under the living room area might seem odd or impressive on how the creator put in so much effort depending how a player reacts.
The Second house is where more things get slightly more unsettling, as the player is teleported to that second house with the skull keys and the new monsters, the player might notice two things; the door sound and animation has changed to the door sliding to a normal opening door as well as the gun animation being smoother with a higher frame rate. These small little changes linger in the back of a player's mind as someone familiar with the game might sense something is off. Even the music gets more distorted as the game goes on, going from the original familiar theme before gradually getting off key, adding new instruments and missing notes entirely.
Game Engine Decision
Now that I have a general plan of the storytelling and have started visual research for the game, now I need to choose a suitable and practical game engine to make the game in. The options I have the easiest access to are Unity, Scratch, RPG Maker and Roblox Studio. I will list the pros and cons of using each engine while also using the written concepts to contextualise some of the points made.
Unity is a cross platform game engine that uses the c# coding language. Some pros for using Unity is that it has what is considered to be a relatively easy to learn coding language as well as it being a diverse engine that allows both 3D and 2D games. It is widely used as the most popular game making software because of its easy accessibility while also having a lot of tutorials.
Some of the cons are even though the coding language is considered easy that might change due to the fact that I have no prior coding experience combined with the fact that most tutorials I've seen aren't helpful and often hard to follow, I want to make at least a small part of the game and not spend my time trying to learn the game engine. I also want the game to be accessible both in the end of year show and outside of it even if it's unfinished, for that I would have to release the unfinished version on somewhere like steam, but even then I'm not familiar with releasing games there.
Scratch is by far the easiest website to learn as well as having the most unique programming language, it has a simple interface and I consider it to be the programming website that I'm most familiar with making it easy for me to create a game on there. It is free as another positive point. It is also known for its animations and art community which would be good for having a unique art direction for my game for those who appreciate visuals in games.
However it does come with a lot of flaws like only being able to make a game in 2D with 3d being hard to achieve, the normal target audience of the website being children and young teens, and the coding being limited to blocks meaning it would be very hard to make a complicated game as well as Scratch being a website known for putting out simple games if they do get popular (though this could be a good as a complicated game would stand out more than the others making it unique and breaking expectations. Overall the website is very limiting due to its programming language.
RPG Maker is a widely known and used game engine used to make Roleplaying, adventure and dating sim games by indie creators. Some positives of using this game engine is that it is easy to use as advertised on its website because of its user friendly interface. It is also semi free, with most of the versions having free trials making it accessible. There are also a lot of kits full of resources that are available to use on their website.
However some cons of making a game on RPG Maker is that it is (obviously) more catered towards RPG type games, I want my game to be more like Myhouse.wad which would be hard to recreate on a 2D game engine. Also the free trials only last 30 days, having a time limit on my game's development could be stressful as I would need to have everything done by that time before I have to pay to use the program, as I don't want to spend money on what is supposed to be a small section /demo of the game.
Roblox Studio is a game engine that uses the Lua Coding language. I have some experience using Roblox Studio as it is the most accessible game engine to use apart from Scratch as well as the coding language being relatively easy to use. It primarily does 3D but 2D is also possible and is good for making almost any type of game. Compared to engines like Unity, the learning curve isn't as large and good for beginners. There are also lots of tutorials and plugins to help with development.
Some cons is that the reputation of Roblox games are quite bad due how many low quality games there are on the platform as well as the main demographic for Roblox being 9 - 12 year olds. Another con is that to earn money from a game is that you need to convert the Robux (platforms currency) into actual currency, for that you need at least enough people to play your game to get to 30k Robux which will roughly convert to £79.
Out of all the game engines I'm choosing to go with Roblox Studio; as I have a good mix of familiarity and unfamiliarity with the game's coding language and overall interface, the game will be easy to access through the Roblox website, and that despite the platform consisting of 9 - 12 year olds, there has been a rise with more mature and story based games, the engine also uses the easiest coding language and utilises a fairly easy to use building system so I won't have to spend time learning how the engine works. It is also unique to use as a game engine as it allows any games as long as it's within its TOS which is fairly easy to follow. The biggest reason is because of the platform's reputation and how I can utilise it to break expectations and make my game stand out.
If the game is based in Roblox people will expect a low quality game; Roblox as a platform has a very wide array of Roblox games because of how easy it is to learn the coding language that makes up Roblox games allowing people to make really anything, however because of this freedom and how easy it is to make games on Roblox it allows a lot of child catered and rushed games to be popular on the site also known as "Slop" (games made solely to get money with no care or passion.) However if I make a higher quality Roblox game, older audiences will have more of a chance to pick it up (solving the issue with my target audience and the platform being mostly catered towards children) from how out of place it would be on the platform and it would gain a lot more traction than a normal typical slop game. This is the same tactic that Myhouse.wad used as it deemed itself as a normal house recreation, but when people eventually caught onto the mod's secrets it became one of the most popular Doom mods to ever be created. There are also a lot of widely known types of Roblox games; tycoons, obby games, simulator games etc... Right now there has been a surge of horror games on Roblox, however these horror games in my opinion aren't that scary, games like Dandy's World and Forsaken which are rising in popularity can be categorised as horror but would fit better under survival. To make my game stand out and break the expectations of people who play Roblox, I need to feed into the "art style" of Roblox but then break away from it further into the game; for that I need to look into the Roblox art style and games that embody that as well as look for visual inspiration to portray the schizophrenic tendencies and hallucinations the MC of my game will see.
Roblox's Art style
- Short Analysis
As of now, Roblox has been going through a "meta" phase, to summarise Roblox has added the ability so that anyone can create Roblox customisable items on the market including body packages, heads and accessories. They have also been leaning towards a more realistic approach over the past few years, and in my opinion, this has destroyed Roblox's art style and recognisability. Roblox is most widely known for R6 characters, the blocky avatars that I have previously shown in my Animation Project regarding my experience modelling, the difference between the Roblox avatar type R6 and R15 being that R6 is much more simplistic with simple blocky limbs with R6 standing for "six joints" while R15 has much more parts or joints in the model itself with the arms and legs having bends.
The R6 avatars are considered iconic, people were restricted more when this was the only avatar type that you could have, but this didn't mean people had less customisation, you could change your body type, your hair have different clothes etc... The only limitation was your animation which was stiff.
R6
R15
In my opinion, I would use the R6 type for my game and the NPCs inside the game as it would be easier to animate idles for them, as well as fit into the current trend in Roblox games which is to use R6. Overall they do look better stylistically, and even though I wanted to break the expectations of the player and add something stylistically I don't think I need to affect the most iconic part of the Roblox game to shock the player; even My House.wad keeps Doom Guy at the bottom of the screen at all times to remind the player that it is a Doom mod. Roblox games that could inspire my game are, KALEIDOSCOPE [DEMO], Pizza Game and EXPEDITION (PROLOGUE) which so happens to be a game about guilt and regret. All of these games have the common aspects of the characters being in R6, I'll be looking at all of them as a whole for visual inspiration.
Kaleidoscope is currently a demo game that features characters called "Dummies" . I won't go too much into the game but I would like to focus on the characters visually. What I like most about the characters of Kaleidoscope is the clear theme of pink, which is seen in all characters and the environment itself. It gives the game a unique appearance which unites everything together. I talked about this kind of theme in my Narrative Design Project about Broken Age and how it gives the game a clear identity that you can recognise, this is the same with Kaleidoscope. I want to point out that these characters (as of now) use free assets for the accessories of the game, I think this is a smart move as this is a demo of the game and using these free items as placeholders saves time. I mentioned earlier that I wanted to keep the characters of my game blank or anonymous so that the player can project and interpret the characters how they want, therefore I will draw inspiration from Kaleidoscope and leave the characters mostly blank, but give them accessories so they stand out from one another.
Pizza Game is a Roblox rogue-like first-person shooter, similar to Doom or old retro shooters. What interests me the most about the Pizza game is the way it is presented, it sells itself as a pizza game, the title and the art is bright and fun so people assume it is similar to a simulator like Work At A Pizza Place. Instead when pressing play on the colourful menu you will be spawned inside a church, and will have to kill enemies to get to the teleporter finishing the level. I would like to draw inspiration from the promotional material of the game, as even the title misleads players from what the game is actually about. The title is vague and brings up a lot of questions, however when clicking on the page of the game, while still very vague the description explains "A rogue-like FPS about everything but Pizza. Inspired by the Doom franchise and Tower Fortress." leading the player more curious about the game itself. I want to try and draw in players by making them curious about the game by being vague, similar to how My House misleads the player thinking it is just a short 10 minute Doom mod, therefore I will create slightly misleading promotional art and a vague title to advertise my game.
EXPEDITION (PROLOGUE) is a short Roblox game about the main character you play as falling deeper into self loathing and guilt after lying to their friend about moving. The game is visually simple but also very appealing to look at, it also has a similar concept of making the main character blank so the player can project on them. What I like most about it visually though is the unique use of Roblox's UI system and cutscenes to convey what the character is feeling and to portray the story. The game uses 2D elements and drawings to make the visuals more interesting and really elevate the game itself, for example, segments of handprints covering the screen to convey the character getting consumed by emotions as well as eyes appearing to portray the characters guilt and judgement of themselves. I will probably use real life images and edit them to be in the game. EXPEDITION is also very simple in that it uses mostly dialogue, if I don't have time to make any game mechanics I could always try and learn to make custom dialogue and plan conversations and inner monologues as a priority.
Omori's Art style
Omori is a game I chose to research visually as it relates to my theme of being consumed by emotions; the game is a psychological horror game that deals with topics of delusion, depression and trauma. Here's a short summary:
Omori is a psychological horror RPG game created by Omocat released on the 25th of December 2020, featuring a depressed young boy named Sunny and how he hangs out with the dream versions of his friends in Headspace. The game showcases a lot of topics such as depression, anxiety, trauma, irrational fears/phobias etc... I'm not going to go fully into the story of the game despite it being interesting and relating to my projects theme, however in summary Sunny is battling his self loathing which takes form of a black and white version of himself called Omori who originally acted as shell that protected him from his trauma that takes form as a floating surreal eye called SOMETHING. Sunny's trauma and guilt comes from the manslaughter of his sister Mari as he pushed her down the stairs which in turn broke her neck, Sunny and his friend Basil cover it up by faking her suicide, this all happening when he was nine. It's a dark plot turned darker as before we know this. Sunny, as we play him in the future, is moving out of his childhood home and after the accident has become a shut-in that rarely sees his friends. Sunny created Headspace as an ideal version of reality to live in when he sleeps and by the end of the game he ends up in the hospital after a fight with his friend Basil who is also dealing with trauma stemming from the accident. Sunny needs to choose between the delusion reality he made or his real friends, if he picks the imaginary versions it leads to him jumping from the edge of the hospital building. If Sunny chooses to see his real friends he confesses what actually happened with Mari, relieving both him and Basil of the guilt that followed them up until this point despite Sunny knowing the reactions of his friends who have been left in the dark. It is a very dark game, however the way they execute Sunny's trauma and fears visually is what I want to actually analyse and talk about.
Despite researching Roblox's art style and deciding how I would apply it to the game, I still needed a way to break that art style and make the game more surreal and reflective on the MC's trauma and the guilt they caused. This is where Omori comes in, Omori is very unique in terms of its art style as it uses real life mediums and photos to give these unique moving sketch cutscenes as well as making terrifying and uncanny enemies. Throughout the game, Sunny has to face three of his biggest phobias, drowning, heights and spiders. These fears take on smiling forms made out of edited and collaged photos of things like hands, as well as being clay sculptures or drawings. It gives these enemies a surreal and unsettling look in this world of cartoony styled characters and pixel art environment of the actual RPG maker game engine.
In the game in Sunny's Headspace there are two main worlds, White Space and Black Space. White Space is considered the safe place Sunny goes to when he wants to be devoid of responsibility, it is an escapism for his trauma and fear if not a very sad location as it's empty and devoid. Interestingly, this parallels my previous research with my House.wad and the fake ending, carrying the same message that this White Space is devoid of warmth and only serves as a distraction from Sunny's real issues that are repressed in Black Space. Black Space is the opposite of Whitespace, the location holding all of Sunny's fears and memories, here the visual mixed medium really shines through in this distorted dark world.
I also would like to analyze the use of negative or empty space in the stylization of the game, especially in seen in White space, the game uses the absence of anything to indicate Omori's feelings of loneliness, I would like to incorporate this in some of my concept art since I feel like the MC would suffer from the same kind of loneliness. I would also like to include the use of colour coding in my game; the character Omori is represented as white and black as a reflection of his inner turmoil with White and Black space, bright purple, blues and pinks almost representing his imagined delusion world. MyHouse.WAD and House Of Leaves also make use of colour representation as they constantly highlight the word House in blue.
One of my favourite visuals from this game is the Red Throne Room in Red Space made with a bunch of PNG hands that fill an eerie red background. I interpret it as Omori taking his place as Sunny's suppression and self loathing as he becomes distorted, I think by using this visual of red tinted hands is very effective as it is uncanny while also being representative of Omori's rise in control. It also acts as a stark contrast to the rest of the game as up until now most of the real life images being implemented into the game's style has been subtle suggesting that this moment of Omori sitting of the throne is important.
I would also like to point out that hands are one of the main imageries we get in terms of real life photos apart from the doors to White Space and Black Space. The imagery of hands is a theme throughout the game, and even though the reason why is not confirmed, I'd like to think the hands are symbolism of many things; such as they are a reminder of Sunny's guilt and how he accidently killed his sister by pushing her with his hands with the literal sense that he has blood on his hands and how white floating hands teleport him back to the centre of whitespace also acting as a mechanism to protect him from recovering his dark thoughts and memories.
I like the idea of using real life images to make the environment more unsettling while also being symbolism, because my character MC deals with a lot of guilt I think by using real life images of eyes and would be interesting.
Using eyes to represent guilt is a very commonly used tactic for visually representing a person's self judgement as well as a person being self conscious of how other people look and feel about them, we see this in EXPEDITION (PROLOGUE) which even uses real life images of eyes. However, with my theme being "Consumed by Emotions", I think it would only make sense to use mouths, teeth and even parts of the throat to symbolise the MC getting consumed by guilt. Omori actually utilises the symbolism of being consumed by guilt and trauma with the fight between Sunny and Basil; similarly to Sunny who's guilt is represented with a floating eye, Basil's is represented by a large black mass that is literally swallowing him.
In my game or concept art I will further develop the idea as using parts of the digestive system to symbolise my MC's guilt, as I think by using parts of the body like the mouth instead of what you would typically expect which would be the eyes it would greater impact the recognisability of the game, the unique symbolism, as well as tie my theme more into consumption as a whole. I will try and use methods of collaging and photo editing to create these distorted images of mouths.
I will also use EXPEDITION (PROLOGUE) as an inspiration for any inner monologue that my MC will have, but because I want my MC to be misleading about the story and the goal of the game (the cabin) I will also draw inspiration from the House Of Leaves and specifically Johnny Truant's footnotes and Pelafina's letters.
Along with my development process I will be making drafts of a script that will include the inner thoughts / monologue of the MC as well as dialogue from other characters such as their parents and other people at the party, and lastly the annotations that pop up when you interact with an object.
Finally I will adjust and add details to the story plan when I see fit, though the main goal is to make a game, I will aim to do as much concept art and narrative changes first before making any advancements on the game.
Visual Research Evaluation
Project Proposal Comparison
In my project proposal I talked about reaching beyond artists for research; while getting visual sources I feel like I have reached my goals of using sources outside of both digital and artistic mediums. I'm pretty happy with the sources I picked as I have sources for the environment and for the overall style of the game, which I'm planning to be semi-realistic. The game will also include real life photos taken of drawings and a recreation of the MC inspired by Omori. Overall I think my research is good though I think I might have wanted to include more primary sources.
Time Management
As I expected my visual research was faster and I have two months to make the game or relevant parts of the game. I definitely don't have enough time to make a fully fleshed out and finalised game so it will be more like a showcase of smaller higher quality sections. I'll have to split my time carefully, spending more time on the game rather than concept art as the game itself will be my final product, as well as having little coding experience. I will also make some behind the scenes in the game showing a less detailed version of the product. I need to focus my time more on the build or visual narrative of the game.
Quality of Work
As I've said the biggest problem for me is probably the lack of primary resources, other than that I think I have researched my sources thoroughly to apply to my development process as well as chosen one relevant to the project as the sources may have similar topics to mine or have unique visuals I could inspire from. I also think it was important to touch on topics such as my target audience and game engine.
Development
Initial Sketches
When starting my initial sketches I chose to start with the logo of the game, it's simple and would be a good way to ease myself into the more complicated sketches. Inspired by the House Of Leaves cover which resembles the staircase within the hallway maze, I created something similar according to the plot of my game; I wanted to create a snow flake like symbol that resembles a hole in the ice. This represents the MC's special person who drowned as they fell through the ice. I tried a few basic snowflake shapes before settling on one that was missing a point; making the snowflake/ cracks in the ice imperfect makes the logo more unique and recognisable. Along side the logo itself I also created a flower symbol representing the MC's special person which parallels the hole in the ice. I also had an idea for the cursor itself changing throughout the game as the hole getting bigger can represent the more memories and thoughts and memories creeping into the MC's mind as the game goes on reminding them more and more about the incident. Lastly I made an "eye" version of the logo as something extra I could use.
I then did some sketches of what the MC would look like, trying to keep it basic but also symbolic at the same time; I wanted the clothes of the MC to represent their poor living state but also resemble something consuming them so I added this coat that resembles a mouth with the zipper teeth. The reason I made the clothes simple is because I wasn't sure if I needed to model it later and to stay true to the Roblox art style not wanting to add too much, I also made some rough variants that I would improve on later like them with at the party and outside. I also based the clothes on what I had in my closet, as I feel like the MC would have a very bad self image I based their clothes on what I would do when I was younger; if I felt I wasn't good enough I would "punish" myself by either not eating or sitting on the floor, so I feel like the MC's version of that would be wearing clothes that would make themself cold.
After doing those simple sketches I tried going more in-depth with the environment as the environment would be one of the most important parts of the game representing consumption and how anxiety, guilt and trauma can warp someone's mental state. I tried sketching out multiple locations within the game like the MC's home/ apartment, the town, the forest and the cabin. I added ideas like seeing a church in the distance when walking through the town to allude to religious guilt, the real and fake versions of the cabin, and parts of the town and forest. I tried really hard to make the forest look eerie while symbolising the mouth visual I landed on earlier, trying to make the trees look like saliva connecting to the ground to the tree line or resembling a throat like tunnel. I based the church and cabin on the real life photos I took, while I used my mood boards and survey images to create the apartment and town. I also liked the dynamic trees I drew that leaned towards the church directly inspired by real life forests with leaning trees.
Lastly I drew some rough drafts of the maps of the different locations within the game, doing some iterations that I finalised later. With the MC's Apartment I wanted to have a long hallway leading to the MC's room to foreshadow locations like the long roads of the town and the wall tunnel in the forest, I also included this as a hint to symbolise the MC's solitary personality and detachment to everyone including their parent. I tried to make the town a balance of linear and also maze-like, the arrow indicating the direction the player will be chased during this section, most of the surroundings would be the square abstract like houses seen in the mood boards. I drew the forest and the location of the cabin, as well as the true location of the cabin in the ending. I tried to mimic an intestine track for the paths with the rocks mimicking glands. I included the church which would look over the player as they enter the forest, symbolising the religious guilt I wanted to hint at in the game; throughout my research and planning process I had slightly lost the religious guilt aspects but throughout my development I plan to bring it back.
With this project I wanted to focus on environments more as by looking at my previous projects I could see that I've focused overall on characters, and since my survey I wanted to focus on the visual story telling of the environment hence the simplicity of my characters. Therefore I started making sketches of potential assets I could make for the game, specifically objects from the locations I didn't do mood boards for. Here I did some sketches of trees, trying to stylise them to symbolise hands, teeth and mouths as those represented my character being consumed by their emotions. I also wanted to keep in mind the scale of the trees since the bigger or taller the surroundings were, the more intimidating the environment would become, not forgetting that this was a horror game. To be more precise, I planned where what type of tree I sketched would be in terms of the locations in game, for example the leaning trees that seem to be blowing in the wind would be outside the map in the distance while the trees resembling hands and the tall trees would be in the forest itself. The normal rounded tree would be seen in the background at the end of the game, another hint to how the MC's perception of the world affected everything to be distorted, even the shape of the trees. I based almost all the trees off of pine and spruce trees, building on the leaning trees. They are also based on real forests with "drunken trees" where a tree grows in abnormal alignment. I particularly like the tall skinny trees. I think the way they represent saliva strands is interesting and not the typical way people would go about symbolising mouths in an environment.
For initial sketches I wanted to plan something inspired from my visual research; I had analysed Omori and its interesting use of mixed media, using real life drawings and photo bashing them into different aspects of the game. Therefore I started planning photos I would take in real life and adapt into the title screens as seen in my first sketch. After developing a satisfactory portion of my game I plan to make a small card doll of the MC and make a cardboard set to put them in to make it. My second page is the panning for how the doll would move and look. I considered multiple options for the joints since I knew I wanted it to be positioned uniquely, as well as have the limbs separate so I could customise the doll with clothes for the third sketch. The third sketch is based on how the Omori title screen changes based on what ending you get in the game. I would like my game to feature a different title screen for when you beat it because it's a visually interesting concept. With the third sketch I came up with a new concept called the "Distortion", it is a manifestation of all the hallucinations the MC experiences throughout the game including the environment changing and the mouth visuals, along with being a manifestation of trauma I also wanted the Distortion to resemble the MC's special person represented by petals/ a flower, including the hands of the Distortion having frostbitten fingers.
These last initial sketches were to expand the idea of the Distortion and for a possible painting found in the MC's apartment. I quite liked the idea of the Distortion being a God like being, and taking inspiration from the Guilt mood board I'd imagine the Distortion constantly watching and judging them even in the town. I made the composition almost abstract with the buildings leaning and looming over drawing more attention to the eye above. The second is a picture with the MC, their parent, another minor participant of the party and Daisy, who is covered by the symbolism of the hole in the ice.
To further include my research into my final product I also plan to include a poem somewhere in the game that will foreshadow or parallel the events of the story. I will write a poem based on grief and the loss of a close person hinting at what happened to MC and how they lost someone.
Concept Art
Apartment
Town
The first sketches I developed were maps of the locations I have decided to make in game, this is as by now I only have about 2 months left to develop everything, and I predict that I'll only have enough time to complete 1 or 2 locations completely because of other aspects of the project like the concept art and the poem, as well as doing some scripting for the game to be actually playable.
For the apartment I combined my ideas from the sketches and made a more detailed layout to follow. I specifically liked the idea of a long hallway leading to the MC's room as well as adding more precise details to every room. I think this is essential since the apartment will be filled with foreshadowing elements and will probably be the most detailed in the entire game being the place most grounded in reality in the MC mind.
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The town map marks the points where the snow wave or the "Blizzard" spawns being the circles with the arrows indicating where it would be triggered, the green areas being safe spots they must run to. The empty areas are spots where there would be buildings with the blue place being an area where the player learns more about the story, maybe a playground that the MC and their special person used to go to.
After the maps I did some thumbnail sketches planning out some concept art based on my initial sketches.
I wanted to gradually add more details to the original story, therefore to keep the religious guilt aspect of the game I had originally had in mind, I changed the event that caused the MC to run away to them causing a priest attending the party to drop a potted plant. The plant represents the MC's special person falling into the ice in the lake, because of this accident the MC runs into their bathroom to reflect. In a panicked breakdown they hallucinate them in the snow realising they could retreat to their safe place; the cabin in the forest.
With the art itself I wanted to start connecting colours with specific aspects of the game, so I made the bathroom have this green sickly lighting to symbolise the MC's guilt. I had also decided that blues would represent the MC, while warmer colours like yellow and red would be more associated with people the MC is close with, pure yellow being the MC's special person. I also wanted to subtly hint at the theme and make the bunting around the mirror to resemble teeth, the MC already starting to remember what happened and deciding to go out into the snow being represented by their reflection already being out in the snow. I also tried to use negative space by making the snow backdrop empty and desolate to reflect the MC's feelings.
Overall I quite like this concept art as it is semi abstract, hinting to the MC's hallucinations as well as the lighting being interesting to look at. I'm pretty happy with the outcome despite the short time I set myself to make it as well as almost all of the piece being made with a mouse, as I hadn't had access to my drawing tablet while I was making it. Also with this concept art I could also use it as promotional material for the game.
Same with the last piece, this is concept art utilising the mouth symbolism but with the snow cave/ wall section of the game. The icicles reflect the teeth of a mouth, the way they unnaturally sprout from the upper side of the cave instead of the natural downwards suggest the MC's warped view of things at this point in the game. It is also very dark inside the cave with the rows of icicles stretching far back indicating how deep it is, even though in game we come to find after it wasn't deep at all.
I added the two distinct branches to the side to look like veins or the Distortion, which will also be an indication to where the MC enters the Maze, when the cave collapses the MC while looking back will realise how close the branches were to the "end" of the cave, showing that the cave wasn't as deep as the MC thought.
Again I used a mouse for the majority of this piece and I think it still turned out well. In the actual game however I might want to change the icicles to be a bit more prominent and add another indicator for the caves entrance. Also for the actual game I will probably add a flashlight that will be with the MP3 player in the town section, since the forest would be pitch black and the player wouldn't be able to see.
With this piece I decided to use one of the concepts directly from the initial sketches, one of the images from the survey and pictures from my mood board to inspire this last artwork. I expanded the idea of the town being these leaning simplistic brutalist buildings as light spilled from between the buildings. The image as a whole is this sickly yellow while the tones are mainly dark, contrasting with the sources of light making them harsh and almost threatening. I plan for the light to represent the blizzard that the MC hallucinates since I plan that the snow wave is actually just cars passing.
This concept art probably represents the last final chase down a long road lined with buildings while they are being chased by the blizzard, the other side of the road being a dark abyss and the MC imagens; which also might be added as an extra challenge in game as the players tries not to fall into the abyss as wind blows them towards the drop. The reason I made the buildings loom over the MC is to make the environment look more intimidating as I feel like the MC staying inside almost all the time has warped their perception of everything (as I've said before) and sees the buildings as gigantic. I also planned to add eyes to the abyss side of the art piece but decided against it since I feel like it would give away too much, plus I said I wanted to use negative space to convey a sense of loneliness so it would be perfect to use in the town where you would think you would see cars of people, making the whole area a bit more disturbing.
Character Art
Despite this project being mainly environment based I also wanted to feature some character designs and character variations with the MC since I feel like despite being the R6 default character, I could add some recognisability. I also wanted to showcase the characters struggles and personality through some of their design aspects, like as I said before the coat symbolising a mouth.
Using some techniques I had learned from my previous projects I made some outfit variations, I would have done some more variations with colour but due to time I decided against it, plus I was already conceptualising colour symbolism and how blue would represent the MC with the pink/ magenta I added representing the MC parents and despite how dismissive or neglectful they might seem due to them leaving their kid alone at a party, they still care enough to stop his feet from freezing.
While I was making this I was beginning to think about giving MC and all the other characters a proper name, so I decided that they would be called Snowflake with all the other character's names being their most distinct features. For example, I plan to give the parent a scarf, and therefore they would be named Scarf in the game.
The other important characters like the MC special person will be renamed to Daisy or Petals, since the game is from the perspective of Snowflake, I think it would be fitting to have Daisy have the most authentic and realistic name since Snowflake wouldn't degrade them to an object as they see them as a person the most. The same mindset goes for characters like the priest, as Snowflake probably regrets what they did immensely they would probably see the priest as someone who is righteous with authority; leading him to just be called Priest. This feeds into the idea of Snowflake feeling incredibly guilty for accidentally tripping him and causing him to drop the potted plant.
Lastly the manifestation of guilt and trauma itself, in the initial sketch I made it a God like entity with the flower symbol on its forehead with billowing clouds around it judging Snowflake. I think it would be better to have the God be more fluid in its design, causing it to shift into anything as Snowflake hallucinates; since its a manifestation of guilt and so on I think it would be a combination of what Daisy would have looked like, what Snowflake thinks God looks like, and the snow that seems to swallow them as they traverse through it. Combining the consumption aspect, the "mouth" would be the most prominent, as seen in my concept art as the motif appears subtly everywhere to their bathroom mirror, to the cave in the forest.
With the finalised design and character art for Snowflake, I wanted to try and have a dynamic pose while they were holding Daisy's symbol, making sure Snowflake's cold hues contrasted with the bright yellow glow, making the symbol the brightest. I also made it so the composition flowed in a circle like motion around the light. I purposely did this to draw attention to the symbol as it is important to us in the game to follow and very important to Snowflake, putting us in their shoes, making Daisy the center of their world.
I would have put in more planning but I need to work on the game since that is the longest process. During the making of the game I plan to add more or change more as I see fit like the dialogue and interact text making sure it reflects Snowflake's consciousness. I will also use this finalised art as promotional material for the game.
Game Plan / list
I decided to make a list of most of the things I need to get done, obviously there will be more things I have to learn or do but at least the important ones are here. I split the list into three sections, Priority, Extra and Finalization; these are pretty straight forward but Priority are the things I will work on first, with Extra being aspects I can include if I have extra time, Finalization is the what I will do in the last week or few days and after the project is handed in.
Apartment
Building
Game Development
Apartment
Modelling
Apartment
Modelling + Coding
Apartment + Town
Lighting + Graphics
Coding Experimentation
Adding onto the coding section above, I started coding alongside building. Doing small scripts that I thought would be useful for the game, despite not using the first trigger, WOD and teleport scripts as I focused on more on the lighting and atmosphere on the town instead, realising that it would take too much time to actually make the Town chase due to my lack of experience, as well as replacing the teleport script with a more efficient one. The Parents dialogue is an experimentation of a bunch of different scripts bundled together to make a dialogue sequence; though it is definitely inefficient and could be improved in the future. Still I plan to put the Parent in the game somewhere to showcase this script.
These scripts were made roughly after I had imported my blender models into the apartment build, in which I started to make everything interactable. Understandably I had a problem with a few scripts and had spent hours trying to fix an interaction with the stove as seen by the first few scripts; I had gotten the stove from the Toolbox in which it already had a script but I tweaked it a lot to fit my preference. It originally only changed the colour of the stove but now makes the pan smoke and for text to pop up.
I have a lot more scripts that I could show but I'm only going to use these as examples since there are a lot of scripts in the game. Later on I add functions such as a Menu toggle, custom animations, running and a first person toggle.
3D Modelling + Making Snowflake Figure
After I had gotten to a stage of development where the game looked good I began modelling Snowflake to put in game and to use as a reference when I began making a mini doll version of them. I planned to take them out of paper and card in the initial sketches but I had originally planned to make the doll out of clay similar to Omori. Though a problem with this was how heavy the doll would have been and how waiting for the clay to dry would've taken a bit of time unless I bought new clay in which I didn't want to spend too much time on the making process. The doll also needed to be stable enough to stand on its own and be able to pose which I would've needed a wire frame to put the clay on which I didn't have. A few weeks before I started to develop the game I had bought this cardboard Puffin set, this gave me the idea of making the doll out of paper or card since it would've been light enough to carry as well as light enough to hold the limbs with things such as tape and blue-tack.
With accessories everything would be separated by limb, since the coat drapes off the shoulders I modelled it so the sleeves were actually separate from the main coat on the torso, allowing the limbs to move more freely. With the shirt I made the collar and pocket 3D to have the character have more depth rather than just having a 2D drawn on shirt like the pants . I also modelled the party hat and made it green and yellow to represent Snowflake's guilt intertwining with their thoughts of Daisy as the colours spiral. The finished version in the game was finished after I had made the model with the player able to see themselves as Snowflake when they looked down. The part of the model I struggled with the most was probably the coat; as I wanted to make everything look connected despite it being separated. I also struggled with the hat's string, since the hat was tilted and didn't lay flat on their head, making the string look natural was also something I struggled with.
Before I made the actual final doll, I wanted to experiment using paper since I didn't want to waste the limited card I had and I had never made a paper doll before, so I took a few tries of making some of the body patterns on paper. On my first attempt I realised I had already made a mistake which was not making any flaps to cover the bottom or top of the limbs, or making flaps to stick each side together. The head was also difficult since I tried to make it more round like in the game, but it didn't look good and was flimsy. Using this info I made another head that turned out pretty well, it wasn't accurate but I had decided that anything that looked wrong could be edited, plus the head was more stable now and I wanted to prioritise how strong the figure was rather than have it completely accurate. I then moved onto the actual figure, this time using flaps to put the glue on and making it on card, I did make one or two mistakes like having to remake the arms for being too wide and having the head too big, but the last mistake proved to be more practical since having the head smaller would obscure the face in the photos.
After making the collar, party hat and pocket, while drawing on the rest of the features, I got a spare cardboard box to make into the set, making sure Snowflake was the right size before moving on. Next I made the coat, it was pretty tricky to have it hold in place because of how I made the legs wider than the torso, though it did create a nice flowing effect when I indented the paper enough. I then made the slippers, which I made out of paper first since I wanted a more pinkish colour, but they were flimsy as the paper wasn't too strong. I therefore did some more digging through my house and found a more accurate colour in the card, which fit their feet perfectly meaning I didn't have to use blue-tack to stick them on. I had realised I forgot to add the teeth, so during the making of the sleeves I cut out small triangles out of a grey card and stuck them on. Finally I made a miniature chair for them to sit on.
I had decided to make the final ending screen first since it was more interesting visually and would take longer to edit. To set up the box room, I used fabric instead of my original plan which was to line the box with card so then I could easily drape a different fabric for the start screen as well as save more time. The fabric could also be an indicator for where I needed to edit the snow.
Official In-Game Title Screens
The Ending Title Screen
To take the photos I set the box up on my table, attaching a light source to the side of the box for the light bulb, and then using a phone stand directly in front. To depict the distortion I put a timer on the camera and posed like the initial sketch. In the original picture I stared straight ahead so my eyes could be as visible as possible as it was a focal point to the image. I then imported the picture into Krita, using pictures of clouds I found on the internet, I roughly blocked out the whole image. While making the Title screen I used a mixture of photo-bashing, editing as well as using a digital brush to blend the clouds, I used various methods of colour correcting to make the overall image seem cold and bleak. I also used an image of my friend's mouth to make the teeth surrounding the room and completely redrew the hands to be more noticeable.
As some short analysis of the final version of the Ending Title Screen, the image was supposed to reflect Snowflake's feeling of guilt and trauma eating and consuming them as they feel undeserving of love from the loss of Daisy. Daisy is supposed to haunt them in a way, and the God-like being watching over them in the Ending screen is supposed to represent their religious guilt for they feel like God I watching them and judging them, while these feelings combine to make the Distortion that diminishes their mental health as the days pass by. The symbol on the Distortions head is the brightest and most saturated focal point contrasting with the rest of the blue tinted image since in a way Daisy was Snowflake's god or whole world, but their view of them is tainted by their death leading the yellow to be this sickly green tint which we've already established is the colour code for grief, guilt and trauma. The edited clouds can also be interpreted as the Storm that follows them in the Town Chase, while in the image they circle around the room, combined with the intrusive presence of the Distortion's cracks seeping through and the teeth seemingly enclosing around the room, it creates a interesting composition that makes Snowflake look small, timid and weak. If I were to change the image now I would make the Daisy symbol slightly less noticeable so that the room Is the first thing we see, since the Distortion is supposed to be something the creeps in, though because it's so visible in the image you can interpret it as all the intrusive and negative thoughts taking over completely.
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The Start Title Screen
I wanted the start screen to be tonally different but also have some foreshadowing, I also wanted to keep in mind the section during my Roblox analysis where I analysed Pizza Game with its promotion being misleading. I therefore tried to make something combining those factors making it not too obvious that it was a game about being consumed by your own guilt and trauma while also fitting into the game aesthetics. With the original photo I quickly put together a set resembling the apartments living room, maybe before the party, with a circular table and a boxy couch; again remembering I couldn't spend too long on this section of the game the furniture was non detailed since I could edit it in Krita.
Again a short analysis, I made the whole image brighter than the ending title screen but not too saturated since the actual contents of the game are pretty dark. I also made use of the cloud PNG's to reflect a combination of clouds and snow, flowing in an arc motion around the room to signify the cycle of guilt already taking place reinforced by the fact that Snowflake is already wearing the party hat even before the party. Since this piece was supposed to reflect the ending screen, I kept the light yellow since the room is more saturated and the yellow light would reflect the pure version of Daisy without the Distortion.
Music Experimentation + Extra Research
Even with my experimentation with making Snowflake as a paper doll and photo bashing, I still felt like I hadn't quite reached a level of experimentation that reached outside my comfort zone, therefore I looked back to my project proposal I saw that I had mentioned an artist named Maebi that I could draw inspiration from. I didn't want to spend too much time on this so I limited myself to two songs to analyse; Trauma by Maebi and Gar's Theme by Garbofunky both on Youtube. The reason I picked these two songs is because of how similar they are but how the two are drastically different tonally and how I could utilise a similar technique to evoke unease or comfort when music is playing in my game.
Even with a lack of music knowledge I will try and analyse these songs to better understand them and apply it to my music. Both songs have a slow tempo and a similar note structure for the main melody, but I think the biggest difference that I found was the instruments and effects used and how they made me feel. In Trauma, Maebi uses a distorted piano for all parts of the song except for the static heard in the background, the way it echoes is eerie like standing alone in an empty room. The other main melody that comes in 27 seconds in can be comforting in a way as it accompanies the first, but as the song approaches the minute mark the first main melody becomes distorted and uneasy. By the end of the song, the first main track is replaced by something dark as it seems to recall its original melody, while the second high pitched piano seems out of place ending on an eerie echoing note, humming through the static as the song stops. Unlike Trauma, Gar's theme seems a lot softer in tone as it uses slow synths and bells almost like a lullaby. The pitch is a lot lighter, the static not as intrusive as Trauma's and the melody being slow and repetitive throughout the song giving a sense of ease as predictability can be comforting, with the added bells in background coming in at 50 seconds elevating a feeling of nostalgia as it floats above the main synths. Even as the song slows down at the end of the song, it doesn't go so off pitch that it's uncomfortable, but rather gives a strange and sad feeling as the bells are left to fade out.
Now that I have established how the tempo, instruments and melody can affect a song's tone and how personally I feel when listening to them, I've decided to make three distinct songs for the game. I will be using Soundtrap to make the song and I will use the free loops and one-shots provided by Soundtrap to help since I have no prior music making skills. First of all, I wanted the tracks to be able to loop or ones that could represent Snowflake's cycle of guilt, also for the fact that in game some sections would be looped depending on where the player is like in the Town being chased by the snow blizzard.
SnowNight Main Theme | Just like how colours could represent different characters, I made it so different instruments could represent different aspects of the game as well, the main theme reflects the overall plot of Snowflake's guilt and trauma stains their memories of Daisy
The main piano that comes in first representing Snowflake, I made it reverb and have a slow - ish tempo, to represent their mellow and down trodden personality.
These two tracks that come in represent Daisy and the snow, how Daisy introduced light to Snowflake's
world, being the lightest instrument on the track
Snowflake is left alone, the last instrument in the song with the reminder of what happened still stinging their ears
The Distortion as a foreign unrecognised instrument, intruding on Snowflake's thoughts as the long notes take hold over the hopeful melody, signifying how it's everlasting being the second last instrument to stop.
The snow has been a constant and no matter how Snowflake sees it, as a good or bad aspect of their life, it will always be there. A balance between the Distortion and reality, being a more calming synth than the Distortion.
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SnowNight Chase Theme | With the Town's chase theme I wanted it to feel chaotic and ominous at the same time, therefore I combined what I did for the first track and the genre break-core to have an exciting and exhilarating track for the chase. This is also the track that I used the most free loops, the tracks where you can see the notes are mine.
As Snowflake hears the radio of an incoming blizzard or snow storm, they can only imagine the worse, hence synths come in first to represent anxiety
Anxiety is also another emotion that the Distortion can represent, therefore synths are the main leads of this track.
Snowflake getting dragged back to reality as they see the Gas station where their parent is getting whine, hence the familiar snow theme
A high pitched piano representing Snowflake running through the streets of the town. The small notes echoing to give an ominous effect.
The breakcore drums come in as Snowflake hallucinates it chasing them, the loudest but also muffled as it's probably in their head
Small pitter patter notes that are drowned out by the drums, reality being overridden by Snowflake's imagination representing a lighter snowfall.
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SnowNight MP3 Theme | This is the most simple theme with only three tracks one of which is static. Even with its simplicity, it is the theme that resembles my inspiration the most.
The static is loud in the beginning not to replicate the MP3 player starting but to represent the replaying of memories in Snowflakes head
The piano that was supposed to represent Snowflake now represents the water of the lake that daisy drowned in, as the piano notes swell in a much darker tone.
The lighter bell like notes represent Daisy, or rather their heartbeat as it slows down, as they drown and freeze in the water
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Game Development 2
Apartment + Town
General Development + Experimentation
Apartment + Town
Traditional Animation Experimentation
Apartment + Town
General Development + Poem Experimentation & Dialogue
Apartment
Finalising
Poems Experimentation
With the game I wanted to add something that was inspired directly from my research as by the time I was making extra models for the characters I had focused on things from a visual aspect, and even though there was narrative told through the settings I wanted something that wasn’t that really foreshadowed the plot. Therefore, as something short and simple I could make in a short amount of time, I went back to poetry as I listed it on my Priority list. I do have some experience making poems but that was mainly in secondary school, therefore I watched a video to help me conceptualise a first draft of a poem that would reflect on the cycle of grief and loss. I learnt that describing a feeling in a specific way will help a poem not feel cliche or straight forward, and that is by describing images and scenarios that help the reader experience what is being felt or told in the poem. Here’s the first draft of the poem that I made describing the grief and loss of someone, which I will be using in game.
By using specific imagery, it creates a unique visual in the reader's brain, and in a way describing with imagery helps the reader relate and understand the meaning and feeling even if they haven't experienced loss or grief. My favorite part of the poem is probably the structure, because even though I had forgotten common poem structures to use, I went with what I felt was right and used things like enjambement which is especially important in the second verse as the subject I talk about at the end of each line is the subject I'm talking about at the start of each first line creating the unique rhythm that could be thought to be repetitive and reflect on a cycling motion.
I also made it so I focused on a bigger subject each line before focusing on "one small daisy" in which "daisy" is highlighted in yellow in the UI. It reflects on how to Snowflake Daisy was their whole world; "a solemn sigh" feels heavy and sad with the added alliteration, the Earth and the Sun have much more calming and peaceful imagery reflecting how the world keeps spinning without Daisy, with the Sun representing the small positive that maybe Daisy is at peace.
On the last verse it reflects Snowflake, trying to move on but can't. I use Caesura, a technique used to signify a harsh change in a line, in which the first instance was Daisy dying, hence the full stop before I wrote "As it lost its last petals" while the second indicated how Snowflake was remembering them at last in a positive light, though it would all then circle back to the beginning as the dance between Snowflake and their memories with Daisy start again.
Since I had time to make another poem, I chose to do one for a Journal entry in Snowflake's diary. The structure is more straightforward and in it they are talking about their parent. I won't go too much into detail but the entry is about how their appreciation turned into resentment for how their parent cared for them despite knowing what they did; they themselves thought they shouldn't be deserving of someone's care. As an extra detail I added in development, the one person who cares about them the most is wearing red, knowing what I stated before about colour coding warm colours are supposed to represent Daisy and good positive things, but the character is wearing red which is often interpreted as a colour that signifies danger.
In this poem I also added specifics to make the reader resonate with Snowflake while also describing how they feel about themselves; they describe imperfections about their bathroom mirror reflecting how they see themselves as an imperfection to the world. I also remembered my topics of religious guilt and added references to the distortion being "it" or god to them.
I also added the technique I used in the last poem, but putting singular words in between every few lines to create a small phrase "But when does it stop" as if Snowflake is asking when the grief will end despite being the one whose trapped themself in it.
Traditional Animation Experimentation
Adding onto Game Development 2 two above, here's the original photos for the animations. I was going to do more like a storyboard cutscene of the party accident or the start of the Town chase, but I needed to finish up my game as I had planned to release it for public testing so I could get some feedback.
Unfinished Storyboard for a in game cutscene
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Game Development 3 Finalisation
By now I have only a few days to finish the project and write everything done, therefore I gotta work on adding small details and things I might have missed along the way. For example I forgot to give the priest the flower pot which was essential to the story, so I quickly modeled one for him. I also did particles some time ago but forgot to include them in the previous development images; I liked adding small details like the dripping of the tap and added the same dripping effect to things like Snowflake's shower and a spilt cup in the kitchen. Finally I finished the main town section, adding rolling snow particles that flew off into an abyss and made the apartment more lively by adding a crowd noise and door sound effects to Snowflake's room.
Looking back at my progress I'm happy with my results, though there's things I wish I could've added that I will list here and will go more in-depth on my final evaluation
Building
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Church and trees in the distance like the initial sketch, I was specifically planning to also make the surroundings be made out of 2D drawings but made 3D with placement
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Parent's truck in the Gas station with the MP3 Player
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More variation with the towns buildings
Other
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Made the character designs for the other characters more thought out
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Make posters and pictures for all the blank ones on the walls and corkboard in the apartment
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Added a cutscene to give more exposition on the story
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Add an extra poem in the secret area.
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Wind and ambient noise in town
Feedback Survey
For major bugs and general feedback I released the game to the public, afterwards I made them fill out a short survey for my project so I could get some constructive criticism and feedback on the game. It helped me notice big errors like the seats still being on the actual assets causing one playtester to get stuck, and one having a different screen resolution causing the UI to not fit their screen, both if which were major and fixed promptly. Most feedback was for general gameplay improvements which I didn't mind like changing the Menu to also have a key bind which it would be taking into consideration if I were to finish the game, since I don’t have time the game will be left as it is from now on though I will take these to consideration in the future.
Evaluation
I wanted the start screen to be tonally different but also have some foreshadowing, I also wanted to keep in mind the section during my Roblox analysis where I analysed Pizza Game with its promotion being misleading. I therefore tried to make something combining those factors making it not too obvious that it was a game about being consumed by your own guilt and trauma while also fitting into the game aesthetics. With the original photo I quickly put together a set resembling the apartments living room, maybe before the party, with a circular table and a boxy couch; again remembering I couldn't spend too long on this section of the game the furniture was non detailed since I could edit it in Krita.
Research
In this project, I was asked to explore Consumption in multiple contexts and themes, and based on the research I gathered needed to create a final product based on Consumption and the theme I chose. I decided to extend the context of Consumption to metaphorical and literal sense as I picked the theme “Consumed by Emotions” instead of the more widely used context of ethical ideas relating to the topic. I think my decision was valid due to looking at my previous projects and seeing that a more interesting topic motivated me more resulting in a better, more thought out final product. In my project proposal I said that I needed to branch out into different mediums for inspiration, and that I needed to connect my ideas to my research and inspiration much more. I will evaluate how well I executed these two points as well as how well my research went.
With my contextual research, I wanted to look at emotions that could consume a person, the main emotion I looked at being guilt as personally it is the emotion I’ve seen people talk about. I put together a mood board to help me condense my ideas like religious guilt and visuals like eyes but the inspiration that I drew the most from is a quote I saw from a poem. I think the poems were a great balance of artistic writing and simplicity to start off my secondary research to inspire the main plot of the game, and even though I did have some bias since I had looked at poems in the past, The War Of Vaslav Nijinsky was one I had never looked at before and inspired the whole project from that point forward as going deeper into the history of Vaslav Nijinsky and Sergei Diaghilev inspired the relationship between Snowflake and Daisy. The House Of Leaves and MyHouse.WAD only reinforced the idea and helped develop the plot as it had the same concepts despite me choosing them due to the abstract narrative aspects of both the storylines relating to being consumed with trauma and anxiety while touching on topics such as mental illness. Despite not being planned, the War Of Vaslav Nijinsky, House Of Leaves and MyHouse.WAD support each other in my research showing the effects of trauma and guilt even though the War of Vaslav Nijinsky was published in 1981 and HOL and MyHouse were released pretty recently, it shows that these topics of separation causing mental health problems need to be talked about as it is a recurring thing. As I continued I started combining these ideas and conceptualising about the games plot; because of the many sources of inspiration the plot came to me naturally as with the plot of two people separating became more and eventually turned into the cycle of grieving a person you lost and feeling like it was your fault, something unique and special I knew I could turn into an interesting game. Something I wished I used more was the survey, and how I wish I gathered more primary sources; despite only referencing it at random points where I say I was inspired by it like including anxiety along guilt, I found it really helpful in adding relatability to Snowflake while also giving me ideas for the major events in the game like being overwhelmed by the crowd at the party as I only looked at two questions I asked within it, apart from the visual section which I will talk about later. I wish I had more time to research more contextual primary sources, as well as things like target audience, but with the outcome of the story I think I reached what I had planned in my project proposal. Especially how I went back to research music to help with experimentation, I think I definitely got the target of researching mediums outside digital art covered. Another point that made my contextual research relevant was because it even helped and kick started some visual aspects like The War of Vaslav Nijinsky being set in the snow, and HOL and MyHouse being included in my visual research for formatting and game breaking level design. Overall, in my opinion looking back at everything, my narrative plan was a good result of my research having a good balance of all my research about the topics of being consumed with emotions, mental health and the cycle of guilt and trauma within one main plot, and even with how much I wrote down about each primary and secondary source I still enjoyed researching the entirety of it, and if I was missing one of my secondary sources I don’t think the plot would have been as interesting as I feel like it is.
Coming up with sources for my visual was much easier as I had outlined the plot in detail, as well as planned to use two of my secondary sources for visual research as well. I think that my sources were effective, having more primary sources this time but scattered throughout my development as well, like with pictures I took of environments, my outfit and small inspirations. Overall, I was aiming for a semi-realistic horror environment, ominous and disturbing with liminal spaces within my survey and mood boards, which complemented nicely with my plot. I think having a books format is an interesting source to be inspired from, in which I tried to extend on by researching Omori and EXPEDITION (PROLOGUE) as the overall visual I was going for was breaking the game’s norm or format as it paralleled the hallucinations and schizophrenia affected reality theme of the plot. Because of this I found it really important to choose the right game engine that both made it easier for me and also allowed me to “break expectations” or the art style of the engine. I think the analysis of Omori really affected the visuals as a whole as the puppet and photo bashing experimentation would’ve never been done if it weren’t for me being inspired by the enemies. I also noticed that my short analysis of games such as Kaleidoscope, as well as encouraging me to use free assets to help, also inspired the blue outline on interactables which made the game’s visuals more interesting. The one game I do wish I took into countability for was Pizza Game, as I didn’t have time to do much concept art and needed to work on SnowNight; if I had more time I would make more concept art inspired by it’s contrasting promotional art as I feel like mine despite trying with the Title screens felt more alluding to being a horror game.
Design
Starting off by looking at my initial sketches and concept art, I think I really nailed it by focusing on a creepy environment especially with the town and the forest, tying back to the consumption theme in a literal sense by making things like the forest, the snow wall, the mirror etc… resemble mouths but not too much. With the other sketches I tried to be as extensive as possible branching out into maps and Title screen art, these saved me a lot of time in the long run. I also used two more primary sources being my own images, and amplified them effectively in my work as I think I adapted the coat creatively to resemble a mouth. With the finalised concept art, I said I wanted to focus more on environments and I think my research with putting together moodboards helped with that massively, as it also saved me time for putting too much thought into what each place was going to look like. I tried my best to implement some composition design principles into the concept art of the game like the mirror framing Snowflake in the Snow and the leaning building creating some interesting perspective. I tried to even replicate the exaggerated perspective by modelling the buildings leaning, slightly inspired by Little Nightmares since I mentioned it in previous projects. I focused quite heavily on colour and the use of how it both makes the viewer feel as well as the meaning behind it in the game, because of House Of Leaves highlighting the word house and colour being something that affects emotions.
With the paper puppet, I made that choice as a combination of my research with Omori and inspiration from a cardboard craft I made. I think this gave my work a lot of variety as it was different and something I had never done before. I expanded on my experimentation further by going into other forms of artistic mediums such as music, poetry and traditional art; even if it was only briefly I feel like exploring those mediums still helped me improve my artistic technique and make my game more interesting as all of it was to support the game.
The game itself was the most daunting factor for this whole project as coding is not my strong suite. Yet I managed to make the game playable with coding experimentation and watching tutorials. I also surprised myself with how much I got done build wise in the game since I did so much experimentation, even though there were a few things I wish I could've done. For example, In the distance in the town I want to put 2D objects like the trees and the church similar to how I drew it in the initial sketches and probably implemented the same way as I did the traditional animations, inspired by my last project where I used 2D made 3D background. I think it would've made my game much more visually stylised, which is my main problem with the game itself as one of my main targets was to break expectations by doing something visually different; I think I should've done more with the puppet as I think that would've solved my issues with the empty images too. A problem would've been the bugs and glitches but I decided to look past it a little since this is my first time properly coding, and I didn't allow for major bugs in the game since I got playtesters to help me.
The graphics were also a big change for me especially when I started playing with the lighting, as I feel like it improved the game's visuals drastically. It was something I could learn easily and yet it had a big impact on areas of the map such as the hallway looking slightly more ominous and the gas station store’s blue lights being more visually interesting as it contrasts with everything else in game, especially the harsh yellow light seen before hand in both in-game and the concept art. I also like the empty space the fog and haze creates in game, it makes the town seem more empty and creates a lot of uncomfortable negative space.
Despite everything I wanted to do I think I managed my time well making the decision of only making two sections of the game, as one was incredibly detailed while the other ominous and simplistic showing my skills in making different types of environments. I also got them finished without one looking less spent on than the other. Overall I think my game does allude to the theme I set myself of being consumed by emotions and particularly guilt and anxiety especially with the poems and the towering and ominous look of the town and forest area (since I got good feedback from my playtesters saying they got scared by the trees) though I think the apartment should be filled with more people to hammer home the anxiety aspects going back to the survey about crowds.
Conclusion
Overall I enjoyed this project mainly the experimentation aspects (minus the coding as that was personally the most stressful part.) I feel like I have majorly improved from the last project, as the environmental aspects I did in those projects were well done. I feel like I put a lot more thought into everything, as rather the setting than just being an ominous environment it is also rather a reflection on Snowflake’s metal state. I feel like I also improved my narrative writing as it's a lot more in depth as it focused on a smaller story than in my Narrative Design project, which funnily enough, focuses more on topics similar to ethical consumption now looking back at it. It shows how my decision of choosing this topic was a good choice, that a more unique and interesting topic helped me conceptualise more. If I had to do something different next time I would definitely focus on the stylisation aspects within the actual game outside the title screen more but also to try not to get stressed on things that I didn't know or wasn't experienced in and to learn to move on; some of my time was wasted learning how to code and spending time on a small implement and it would've been better to get help from someone more specialized so I could've spent my time doing more stylisation.
I also think that I learned so much more this time as going outside my comfort zone and research and experimenting with new art mediums helped me gain new techniques that I will be using in the future. The same with Roblox as a game engine, since I have now learned a lot and how expansive the game engine is to fixing the UI to making a dialogue system, if I'm making a game in future projects with my newfound knowledge Roblox would be one of my first options for a game engine. With time management I think I did a lot better this time as I had Milanote to tick off boxes each week I did the project, making me more efficient even though the initial time table wasn't that detailed. Finally, compared to other people I do think I did well in making a fully functional game in just 2 months with no prior game development experience. And compared to my peers I think I did more than enough both in writing and practically, professionally wise I think I did a good job presenting the game in the Starting Area and on the website.