Physical Computing 2 - Part One
This post was originally published on December 12th, 2019.
Over the summer, I was lucky enough to visit the V&A during the opening of their Videogames: Design / Play / Disrupt exhibition after being fortunate enough to see it in London. This was followed by Arcadia - a day of talks and presentations by independent game developers, AAA developers, interactive art designers and more. This was then followed up by Press Play, an alternative arcade evening. I think going into our arcade project last year, I didn’t really have a true understanding of alt arcade and the possibilities of creating more tactile experiences in games until I had the opportunity to experience more.
I came up with an alternative arcade project in the summer that never really came to fruition. The idea was based on micro/mini-game compilations like Warioware after a few friends and I were playing Bishi Bashi with one controller. Between micro-games, we had to pass the controller back and forth between one another in a hurry in order to take turns accordingly. I really liked the physical aspect of this and wanted to create something along the same lines.
When also coming up with random video game concepts last year, I came up with a post-it note that discussed the idea of a video game triptych. I kept the note on my wall and wanted to potentially use it for a future physical project. This is what kind of sparked the development of the original idea of the project.
My birth tarot cards are Death / The Emperor. Death is often perceived with its negative connotations, but can also be seen as part of a cycle - representing endings and welcoming begins. It also isn’t necessarily representative of the death of life. It could represent feelings, mindset, tasks or being. I often struggle with the concept of death, and when thinking of this I was reminded of a perfume collection and wanted to name my project after this. Death, Decay, Renewal. I think this also fits the thematic of a triptych idea.
Death Decay Renewal will be a reflection on the three titular concepts. Individual mini games will fall under one of the three themes but together create a story when played. The general theme is hope and patience; the concept of life after death and how energy can never be destroyed or created, only transferred or changed.
The game will have three mini games per level. Levels will progressively become more intense in terms of the delivery of the subject matter. Because of the style of the delivery of the games, and the way they need to be rapidly presented to the player, there unfortunately isn’t a lot of space to create an in depth method of storytelling – therefore, I would like this to become apparent from the subject matter in the games.
The game will potentially have multiple game modes. Similar in style to a game such as Tetris, the goals may either be to play infinitely or to progress into levels. For levels, there will be designated mini-games within a particular level group and the player must complete all of them in order to progress to the next stage. This will continue until the players reach the end. If playing infinitely, the player would be able to access all mini-games at once and gain an overall score for each completed game until a game over condition was reached. At this stage, these concepts may become “nice-to-haves” however.
As the player will be presented with quick rounds of short games, the skills need to be based on things that can be picked up on quickly rather than skills that would be learn over a duration of time. All games will be a reflection of the player’s reaction time. Ideas for mini game skill concepts include button mashing, memory games, fast paced puzzle solving and ultimately the ability to be able to react to commands in quick succession. The game will potentially only utilise a few buttons inputs. I would like to experiment with these, however.
Losing conditions are likely to fall under one of two categories – player response times being slower than the designated time limit or a player failing to complete an objective correctly. Players will be given three “lives” and may fail the mini-games collectively three times before their score is totalled and they are given a game over screen.
The style of the game will be 2D and replicate vintage astronomy charts and tarot cards. The game will ultimate follow a palette of only black and white for a recognisable and blunt aesthetic - whether or not my final output will be in black is a different story. This will hopefully also create less of a time constraint when creating art for the game. To fully replicate this, the mini games are to be displayed in a portrait mode – with the three mini games stacked one besides the other on the screen(s).
Specific artists I would like to be inspired by include Junji Ito and Godsteeth Illustration. I feel as though the aesthetic of their work would compliment the ideas that I’ve already presented through their use of composition and subject matter.
In terms of control and input and display, I have a few ideas but nothing concrete. Last year, I only ended up getting my buttons to working which was a pity - but I think this time around it’s going to depend a lot on how I want the game set up. I definitely want some more interesting inputs, but I’m not really sure how I want this implemented level to level. I’ve purchased some inputs and outputs for my raspberry pi, but I’d like to go into the specifics of my game later.
