Game Idea 1: "Kessler"
Player character and narrative
In this game idea the player plays as a character Called “Donald” who has been born and spent the first 20 years of there life in an underground bunker and after those 20 years of questioning and receiving no straight answers from the adults in the shelter who also have no idea why they are in the bunker all they know is that “its for your own safety” due to the posters on the walls of the bunker that show the slogan “STAY IN TO LET LIFE BEGIN”
The character decides to rebel against the authority of the bunker and sneaks out above ground and upon the surface the character is met with a desolate wasteland littered with broken mechanical objects and rocks etc. that have destroyed most signs of civilization
The character is so confused by the world above due to how different the world looks compared to the pictures in the posters around the bunker in which he spent his life hiding. And the player explores the world in hopes of finding some information or an answer as to what caused the world to become like this and why humans had been forced underground.
Example Poster Designs
The images below are some examples of what I imagine the posters that are plastered around the bunker to look like I sketched the posters first and based one of the designs off of the old uncle sam world war two propaganda posters that have the iconic tag line "your country needs YOU!" and replaced the line with the propaganda tag line that I imagine for my game "stay in to let life begin".
I sketched the designs first, which you can see on the left, and then took to Adobe Photoshop to edit the picture of the uncle sam ww2 man and the slogan to make a mock up poster.
If I go ahead with this idea I would have to draw the man in the poster myself instead of using a picture of the actual historical propaganda piece due to Copyright laws.
Origin Of this Idea
I originally had this idea randomly one day a few weeks ago and had no real research to back up this idea. I just had an idea to have debris falling into earth causing the world to become post apocalyptic due to the mass amounts of debris falling into earth due to the Kessler effect of debris orbiting so I wanted to fact check this to make sure that my game idea could be factually correct.
According to a site called global news it basically stated that the threat of space debris entering and crashing back down on earth is very rare as most of them burn up in the atmosphere or due to 70% of the planet being oceans the parts that do get through our atmosphere crash into the ocean. I took this information as a way that my idea could work as with the Kessler syndrome theory the idea is that the whole planet is covered by so much debris orbiting it that no spacecraft could safely ever exit the planet meaning that there is so much debris in orbit that eventually parts of objects will most likely crash into land and cause chaos.
Essential Experience
For “Kessler” I want the essential experience to be environmental storytelling, so for example I imagine rocks and debris in the dusty wasteland that once was earth and asteroids falling in the background showcasing that earth is until threat from something space related
“Environmental Storytelling is one of those aspects of game development that you know it when you see it, but it’s hard to talk about what it actually is. When it works, environmental storytelling can elevate a game, and it is an effective skill for game designers to master if they want to improve their game designs and storytelling.” (Bycer, J. (2019). What is Environmental Storytelling? [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@GWBycer/what-is-environmental-storytelling-7f76813d9876.)
The Lens Of Essential Experience
What experience do I want my player to have? – curiosity I want my player to experience curiosity as to why everything is happening and to find snippets of story in order to keep them hooked.
What is essential to that experience? – environmental storytelling telling the story of the world through objects and background events to make the player think “why is that happening?” and make them hope to find any more information on the situation
How can my game capture that essence? – I feel the game could capture that essence by being a 2D sides roller that has things happening in the background like asteroids and debris falling in the background and having other debris and that in the foreground and little scraps of information throughout that the player can find and read to answer some of that curiosity they may have but not giving too much away until the end of the game
Schell, J. (2018). Art Of Game Design. (page 22).
The lens of Curiosity
What questions does my game put in the players mind? - What is happening?, why is this happening? Can I stop it?
What am I doing to make them care about these questions? – by building an atmosphere that causes them to question it by having asteroids hit them and obstacles and build in survival mechanics like hunger and health possibility to showcase the harsh reality of the world that they are exploring
What can I do to make them invent even more questions? – having bits of lore around the game world that done have an answer you can find within gameplay which could cause players to make there own theories and questions etc.
Schell, J. (2018). Art Of Game Design. (page 41).
Why call the game “Kessler”?
The name Kessler derives from the Kessler syndrome which is a theory proposed by Donald j. Kessler that states that the more space debris we create the more likely collisions are which could create more and more bits of debris which could lead to us being stuck on earth.
This is also the reason I decided to name the main character Donald after the man who created this theory.
I also wanted the Kessler syndrome top play a part in the ending of this game because as I have just mentioned the essential experience of this game is to be “environmental storytelling” and I wanted to have it so that at the end of the game the player finds an old rocket ship and manages to get it to work by finding things scattered around the environment and they then launch the rocket into space and as they break atmosphere the rocket gets hit with debris and the rocket ship explodes and kills the player and the camera would pan out to show a bunch of debris of space ships and radiation logos on ships would fly bye hinting at a nuclear space war that has taken place a long time ago causing the Kessler syndrome and radiation to fall back into earths atmosphere.
Multiple Endings
Bad ending:
The player gets to the end of the game and finds the rocket and launches themselves into orbit as a cutscene starts and as the player exits earths orbit debris is seen to be engulfing the earth just before the rocket is struck by debris causing the rocket to explode and as the camera pans out the player sess that the debris is a result of a space nuclear war.
Good ending:
The player finds a camera during their travel across the landscape and by the end they have an option to shove the camera in the rocket instead of themselves and the player watches the footage as the rocket ship blows up and the character goes back to the bunker to tell of what he has seen.
Prototype: