The Yawhg

Last post basicly contained a lot of questions. Most of them still remain unanswered.
But let's begin by explaining some pros and cons about games that deal with tough choices and interaction.

Basicly what I wanted to do was, to let players interact with eachother while playing a game together. Where they have to make choices that will have heavy concequenses on either the game or the players themselves.

And how can I conjure up a world that pulls players in and presents them with tough choices.
There are some games that really inspired me.

The first game would be: The Yawhg 

A game with a lovely art direction that's about a certain calamity. A storm? An earthquake? A horde of ravenous goblins that'll steal your underwear and trade it for candy? The game doesn't explain what the Yawhg is. Only that it's coming. I am not going to spoil all the secrets. It's defenitely worth checking out!






4 players take control of 4 characters who are leading their lives in fear of this Yawhg. What will the characters be doing? Every week, each player decides how to spend that week. You can visit the gardens, the forest, the slums, the alchemy tower, the arena and so on. Your stats will increase or decrease based on how you deal with these situations. For example. When you enter the arena you can choose either to compete, or to bet on one of the fighters. So when you compete you have a chance to win depending on the huge sweating brute you are fighting. So your stats will change based on how you spend your weeks before the Yawhg arrives.  So without spoiling too much of the game. It's about choices, and facing the concequences of that particular choice. Every time you play the game it's entirely different. I played it with people and we ended up laughing and yelling about the choices made by the whole group.




None of the choices we made seemed to affect the other players though. We were all just interacting with the game, and not with eachother.
So in the end their individual choices would have an impact on their individual game characters. But wouldn't affect their teamplayers.
But who wants to see their character die in the beginning of the game because one of the other players accidently shot a magic beam at his/her head? No one probably.

Players are able to prevent people entering areas in the game by either accidentally destroying those locations or occupy them for that week.


So wouldn't it be cool if the choices we made would affect your friends? 

The art direction and the music of this game makes it a lot more immersive. We all ended up having goosebumps by the time the game came to an end.

So they do a great job with confronting players with tough choices. Supporting the situations with simple but great visuals and beautifull ambient music.

But does the game need those visuals and sound? or will just text suffice?  I will be asking my collegues who also played this game about their opinions on this matter. And I hope to have an answer very soon. It's important for me to have an answer regarding this. Because I am mainly a guy who deals with visuals to tell stories.

So does my game need visuals?

For more information about the game (if you're not afraid of spoilers that is), this let's play video is worth checking out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_673jQUibI

So how can I let people make choices that have a great impact on their teammembers?
About the Yawhg's art style
 This game deals with a very serious problem. A potentially catastrophic life-threatening calamity is on the way. But the art style gives the world a comical and colourful mood. What happens when the art style is changed to more realistic and dark visuals. Would that change the player's behaviour?

My next post will be about a game called this war of mine. Which deals with those dark and moody visuals.

Graduation and lots of questions

Hellooooo everyone!



It has been a while since I posted anything here.
I am currently in my last year of a course called interactive performance design. And it's graduation time.

 So, what am I going to do? How do I want people to recognise me after I'm done with school. I've always been fond of creating worlds and environments. So perhaps that's something I could use! I am also working as a freelance concept artist in the game industry so that particular skillset (do you call it a skillset?) might come in handy.





Immersive games in particular are things that I like. Being sucked in into a world, that's really something!

That's what I would love to achieve. To make people feel like they're really there. Games like thatgamecompany's journey do a great job. Telling a story with just images and sound. No spoken word or dialogue. That's hard to do right! Will I be able to pull that off and how am I going to do that?


 So Journey, super immersive. Lovely design and mood. The Story is a bit linear but alright! It's a one person experience though. Alright there is another player on the other side of the great big internet who plays together, and shares the so called "journey" with you. But it's just not the same as being in one room with that person.


Wouldn't it be great if you could share those experiences with even more people. In the same room? Being pulled under into a world with a group, like with some pen and paper roleplaying games. Where decisions you make as an individual or as a team can mean the end of your entire party or even the end of the world. 

 But can this be done without a game master? Can I make a game with a branching storyline that changes based on the player's choices.


Can I face people with tough situations? Grab the treasure and leave the rest of your party to face that horde of angry genetically manipulated crododiles, only to find out that there is an even bigger crocodile standing behind a rock, waiting to smash you to bits?
Or face those nasty biters as a team, kick that big crocodile down a cliff, share the treasure and live happily ever after! 

Did your friend hurt his knee? But did you get a nasty cut on your elbow and there is only one bandage? Who's going to get the bandage? Who deserves it more? What are the concequences if I take that bandage for myself? Will my best buddy die from an infection just because I can't stand the sight of blood?

 What if I create a game for 4 people, and player 3 dies in the first 3 minutes of the game because the team decided it was a good idea to use player 3 as a bait for the alien sniper that had absolutely no second thoughts about shooting him. Would it result in merry laughter? or a mad player 3 because he had absolutely no intentions of dying and thought it would be a good idea just to work as a team.

What if Isildur threw the ring into that fiery volcano right away. His decision had big concequences for the rest of the story. Because if he did throw it it wouldn't be worth writing 3 books about it.

 Can I make a game in which players can work as a team to achieve their goal. But also make their own individual choices. Can my story turn people into excellent teamplayers or backstabbing monsters. And can I pull people out of that screen and make them discuss decisions while still being immersed in the game.

Face those concequences!


But here comes the thing with a questionmark on the end.
How am I going to do that? How can I pull people into a world I made up? How can I make people discuss their choices and show them what they've done?

and one of the more important questions is:  Do players need the visual aspect of a game to interact with eachother and make those choices? Or can they do without? 

That's a whole lot of words on digital paper. And all these questions raise even more questions in my head! So this first post might seem like a bit of a chaos. In my next posts I'll try to tackle one little bit at a time. Because all these questions are a little too much for my brain!  to handle.  I hope this first post about my graduation project made any sense.

There are a few games that work with branching storylines. Like the telltale games. (those are really good) and many more games.

I'll make a post about that really soon. Because I think it's important to look at how other people tackled these questions.

Thanks so much for reading!

New workflow paintings :)

CGMA contest and some other paintings

I am really happy with winning the third prize at the CGMA alien world design contest. All the amazing submissions can be viewed here:

http://contest.cgmasteracademy.com/alien-world/submissions.html

Below is my submission for the contest, along with some other paintings I did in the last few weeks.

Towers in the mist

quick painting

I did a quick 3D paintover for practise. Took me about 4 hours in total.

Some Thumbnails