Superliminal, Sketching The World Map, and Project Proposal
A couple weeks ago, I was catching up with my older brother, Milton on a phone call and explained the rough idea for our video game project to him. I told him I was mainly stuck on how to incorporate Peter's suggestion from Week 3 about having "multiple versions of Nyah" (who for the purpose of distinguishing which is which, we have decided to call Hayn). He then suggested the idea that there are multiple 'ghost' versions of me scattered throughout each level but instead of switching perspective in a way that switches character arcs entirely, you only see a scene from the perspective of that version of me.
The examples he gave were: a child version of me jumping on the couch but frozen in mid-air, or a teenage version of me on a phone where her perspective shows anything beyond the screen to be blurry, out of focus, or grey, symbolising how being absorbed in the phone/technology/social media, etc. can disconnect you from what's happening around you.
I added that these could be the main puzzles that allow you to progress e.g. exploration of the house is necessary to find every 'Hayn' and complete the corresponding 'perspective puzzle' related to what that version represents of a certain mindset/worldview/memory. Everything else in the house could provide additional information about the character and setting without being necessary to complete the main story which, my brother remarked, was like Life is Strange. He also showed me a trailer for Superliminal -- a puzzle adventure game that plays on depth and perspective in a surreal sort of dream setting. He suggested I play it for research into how exactly I could approach the puzzles in our game. So I added it to my wishlist and watched my emails like a hawk as I waited for a notification that it might be on sale.
It wasn't, but SEASON: A letter to the future was and I decided to take it as a sign to just buy my top 3 wishlist items anyway. My bank balance is not happy with this decision but I sure am.
Compared to the first two games I played, this game was a lot more inspiring. I especially liked the ending because it gets particularly surreal and abstract as the tone becomes a lot more suspenseful. It really immersed me into the final level and the game's bigger purpose.
In fact, I was so moved by the ending that I cried. The second time I watched it.
And then I played it a third time. To get this recording of pure gameplay for the last two levels.
After playing Superliminal, I felt like I developed the critical thinking skills my little brother said I didn't develop from playing video games growing up, so that made me feel pretty accomplished. It did also feel like I got gaslit into trusting myself and the process but it was a valuable life lesson regardless. It's since served as essential inspiration for the potential framework of Filling in the Space's world and gameplay.
The World Map
World-building and Fictional Cartography as a Narrative Outline
After weeks of inactivity due to severe writer's block, I decided to break up the game by levels corresponding to their environments and the themes associated with each. This, I found much easier than attempting to start with the narrative's characters, conflict, resolution in a conventional storytelling manner. I had also been struggling to consider my own life story -- as the starting point -- in a chronological order since retrospect makes it incredibly difficult to recount memories as they were at the time they were made. Instead of trying to place myself in a mindset I haven't been familiar with for years (e.g. my past selves) and recreating it, I embraced the perspective retrospection has allowed me when reflecting on my past in the present. This kind of contemplation blessed by hindsight is exactly the sort of experience and feeling that made me want to pursue the endeavour in this final project in the first place. Therefore, summarising the overarching themes that tie together the scattered stages of my life and containing them in more metaphorical places across a world map has been brought about much clearer and more fruitful results to my plot planning.
0. The Train
Inspiration:
- filling in the spaces cover art by Crystal Legaspino
- A Taste of the Past
- Life is Strange
- Metropolitan Line/Northwick Park station southbound platform
1. The House
The first level is based within a childhood home designed after a few of the houses Nyah’s own family lived in as she grew up. While the surrounding area of the level features parts of her hometown, specifically her elementary school playground, the beginning stages of gameplay will take place inside the house. Players will have to interact with the house’s interior similarly to a child playing “pretend” games in order to complete puzzles and navigate the space. It would encourage them to exercise their imagination as they uncover memorabilia of the protagonist’s childhood memories and familial relationships.
Inspirations:
- Superliminal
- What Remains of Edith Finch
- Alice in Wonderland
- Community S3 E14 Pillows and Blankets
- Memories of playing pretend as a child
- House on Carnoustie Crescent
- House on Serano Crescent
- Kaylee's Childhood Home in Nevada
Assets:
- Pillow/blanket fort
- Sliding door closet
- Cardboard boxes
- Wooden chest
- Couch car
2. The City
The second level expands beyond home life and into the protagonist’s external world. It will be structured similarly to a maze or labyrinth representing the effort to navigate peer relationships against individual identity. Gameplay will be about escaping the maze of side streets, buildings, unfamiliar people and the industrial while having to regulate the subsequent anxiety and mental instability affecting players ability to complete tasks and navigate the space.
Inspirations:
- Superliminal Labyrinth
- Pokemon X and Y Lumio City
- The Last of Us
- Maze Runner
- Canary Wharf
- Toronto/Richmond Hill
- Vancouver
- Honolulu
- London/Hampstead
Assets:
- Grocery Store
- Backstreets/Alleyways
- Corner Shops
- Maggie's Corner
3. The Dream
The third level represents the internal world of the protagonist. The environment will be dream-like, surreal, and dynamic. This portion will be heavily reliant on syncing music and sound to the gameplay as its more expressive and interpretive than the other two more tangible levels.
Inspirations:
- Porter Robinson Nurture website
- Superliminal Whitespace/Retrospect
- Real dreams I or someone I know has dreamt
- "I dreamt the world ended in a flood and I climbed the jungle gym"
- "In a world of construction paper I know I can't stay"
4. The Dimension
Inspirations:
- Yayoi Kusama Infinity Mirror Rooms
- Marina Abramovic Portal & Transitory Objects for Human and Non-Human Use
- Inside Out core memories
- The Illusionary World from Clannad
- Domain Expansion from Jujutsu Kaisen
- The Pocket Dimension from Miraculous Ladybug
- Ephemeral Memory Garden
Joud's 3D Models
Since the game's design is based on places I've lived personally, I work most closely with Joud by creating concept art for her to make 3D models from that will later be put into Unreal Engine by Stanley. So far, she has made a good start on the first levels' house, train, and the main avatar modelled after me. To provide direction for her to follow even when I'm not able to work with her in real time, I've sketched out floor plans, created collages in Photoshop, and sent reference photos she can use as guidance, for example, when she's been away on trips for professional ski training. Joud has been very good at quickly understanding my vision based on the various methods I've used for communicating them visually.
When she has struggled with understanding my less detailed sketches, we've hopped on an online Google meeting so I could walk her through it.
It has been a very strange experience watching Joud create a Meta Human modelling after me. However, the process of identifying the finest details to make miniscule adjustments of my facial features is not so foreign to me as I used to sketch many self-portraits. I've found that this process reminds me a lot of that and has made it easier for me to guide Joud on how to recreate my likeness. Though we did take to naming the Meta me, Hayn, for ease of reference and differentiating between my virtual and corporeal self (and because it was just too uncanny to keep calling her by my own name. The majority of avatar templates weren't very similar to mine and I asked for help explaining things about asian faces that I wasn't sure how to put into words. She remarked that asian facial structure kind of resembles a cat's so a few cats were also included in the reference photos.
We also scanned some of my objects from Week 2-3's workshops in which we had 30mins to create something that encapsulated our initial project ideas. This was to encourage us to get up and make things in preparation for the practical research we would do as the driving force behind the creative process of the module. Since I live on campus, I had a lot of my personal belongings easily accesible from my room such as my guitar, my polarid camera and digital camera, baby photos in frames, my journal, my sketchbook, my songbook my Aunt gifted me, and the stuffed animals I've had since I was young. Joud discovered an app called Kiri that allows you to make 3D scans from your phone which we were eager to try out on these items (and me).
This is definitely a method I'd like to try incorporating into my game so that we could have scans of some of my actual childhood belongings in the game. Not only would it save time making and finding 3D assets, but it would be really interesting to see the real memories overlap with the fabricated memories, like the house interior modelled only after my own jumbled memory of the layouts of several houses I grew up in. Julie mentioned that the difference in textures might also add to the idea that this world is an amalgamation of the real and imagined and in taht case, become an art style in and of itself.
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