Week 9 saw a pivotal direction change in the narrative primarily along with iterations on the art, level design and game design end. Almost nearing the end of the semester, we realized that our story still had some loopholes that we needed to find answers for to better support the infrastructure of our game.
After consulting Kate in the previous week and watching the “The little engine that could”, we tried to align our story in the following form
- Inciting incident
- Rising action
- Reversal
- Climax
- Resolution
“Once upon a time, in a woodland world, there was a silly and peculiar bird named Peck. He always dreamt of delivering mail, but was always told that he probably was not capable to do so. Peck was caring, friendly, curious and expressive. He wanted to help, but was always turned away. However, determined to fulfil his dream, he applies for a job at the post office. This post office boasted of grandiose birds who were top-notch in delivering mail in this woodland world. Seeing his applications, the birds were skeptical since he seemed a little underqualified given the peers and his experience. However, as luck would have it, an old humble tortoise overhears the birds murmuring amongst themselves, belittling Peck’s application. Overruling everybody else’s decision, the mighty old tortoise decides to give Peck the job upon realizing Peck’s determination and perseverance in fulfilling his dream. He believed in Peck when nobody else did. Somewhere, he saw himself in Peck and believed that there would come a day when Peck would achieve great heights and surpass his own dreams. Overjoyed on receiving the offer, Peck wobbles and wads into the post office with blissful energy and enthusiasm. On his first day, Peck decides to deliver mail just like everybody else. Tumbling, tossing and getting himself into trouble, he manages to somehow deliver the mail, however, something inside him makes him realize his uniqueness. He realizes he is different but not incapable. He was unique and he was going to have his own unique ways of accomplishing the same job. Leveraging his adorable charm and deftness with tools, he starts delivering mail by using the tools gifted to him by the community after endearing himself to them and learning along the way how to utilize his inventory to efficiently deliver mail in the future. “
As the narrative was being fleshed out, the artists were also working on creating color explorations and adding more details to Peck. They were suggested to use triad colors for the next iteration.
The designers were working on a rough demo that reflected the mechanics alongside fleshing out the biomes in the world further.
We got the feedback to show the pillars of what the core experience is; the moment to moment gameplay, what do we want our audience to know is the fun aspect of this game (ex. Platform, interactions, exploration)
Overall, Week 9 saw a lot of progress on all ends and our goals for next few weeks were to flesh out the remaining details from what we have on the art and design end, start working on the financial deliverables and tie all aspects together for a wholesome experience.