After we agreed to work together as a team, Hayley and I immediately started brainstorming. I think for a game with a more complicated and “majestic” art style, we needed to have the actual concept nailed down before we started anything.
This post covers some Discord chats, concept art, some role evaluation, Concept changes, World inspirations and deciding the game title with SEO research.
Discord Brainstorming
Hayley and I chose Discord as our primary form of discussion for our project and concepts. Here are some convos from our Discord DMs about the narrative and mechanics.
Hayley’s initial notes on the game plot
Saturday Discussion
On Saturday, the 29th of November, Hayley and I came into class to discuss our ideas in person, since we couldn’t meet on Thursday. We looked at things like scope and what the level would look like.
Some points from the discussion:
- Hayley liked my split-screen idea from the Childhood braiding, but we didn’t want too many split-screen views, as it would be too difficult to code and possibly confusing for the player
- So far, we’ve settled on a main screen for the player to walk around the game and a screen for the handicraft minigames, where the player will be helping the dolls with their various activities.
- For the main screen, little characters would walk across the screen, and we could interact with them, prompting their portrait to appear. You can then ask what they need help with and prompt a minigame.
- We decided our roles:
- Hayley: Programmer, Environment artist (digital watercolour), Character Designer, UI designer, Sound designer
- Me: Programmer, Environment Artist (collage), Narrative Designer, Sound designer
- Role Evaluation: Personally, I am happy with these roles, as I didn’t want the main art to be my role like in year 2. I found I was not as confident in my art as others in this class, so I entrusted Hayley to perform this role. With the others, like the narrative designer and BGM designer, these are roles I feel way more comfortable in. I love writing stories in my free time, and Hayley wasn’t confident in narrative writing. Last year, I dabbled in proper narrative writing with Kinetic Panic, and I created the beginning dialogue, which tied in nicely with the game. With BGM, I have also made music on Ultrabox in my spare time for the past few years. Last year, I also made the BGM for Kinetic Panic, and a lot of people enjoyed it, helping it to enhance the game. This has led me to be confident in my ability to create melodies when needed.
- Our Shared Roles
- Environment Artist: Hayley wanted to do some watercolour for the environmental art, and I wanted to design some objects to possibly be physically scanned to give a “crafty” effect, so we shared this role.
- Programmer: We thought it was fair to split the programming between us as we both want to learn more this year, and this is a great opportunity to do that.
- Sound Designer: Hayley is competent in orchestral BGM with programs like MuseScore, and I am confident in percussion and chiptune like Beepbox/Ultrabox.
New Overview
Old Overview: Enter a village of quirky dolls that occupy various handicrafts to pass the time. You play as an imaginative little girl: lace bobbins, braid hair, and paint ceramics while you learn more about their personalities. Throughout your time here, conversations between adults corrupt the scenery, threatening to destroy this peaceful world.
Problem: When I said this overview to Adam on Monday, it seemed quite confusing. When I read it back, I understand why. The game has a lot of niche topics that may confuse those who aren’t into them. The text is also clunky and leaves more questions than answers. Why is the girl there? Who are these dolls? Why are adults even involved?? I tried to reformat the synopsis to address these issues.
I’ve tried to simplify the plot using keywords so that readers aren’t too confused about what the game is actually about. 5 keywords: Imaginative, girl, arts and crafts (instead of handicrafts, as this is a less commonly used word), tasks, “confront your reality“.
New Overview: You play as an imaginative little girl helping to maintain your dolls and their village that you created using arts and crafts supplies. Help them with their tasks: cut shapes out of paper, braid hair, and paint while you learn more about their lives. The fantasy is perfect — until conversations from the real world start seeping in, and eventually, you are forced to confront your reality.
Verdict? I think this is easier for people to understand the general concept and how this ties into dolls and handicrafts (arts and crafts).
Simple plot summary:
- You are a little girl ~(8-11) who has created an imaginary world using her real dolls and craft projects. (Maladaptive Daydreaming)
- She customises her dolls and the world: help them out with their tasks and talk to them to progress through the game.
- The girl is highly imaginative, but the reason this world was created was for a darker reason.
- Her parents are extremely volatile, and on the brink of divorce; these arguments leak into the imaginary world, causing the world to “corrupt” and break.
- At the end, the world starts breaking apart to reveal the girl in her reality, neglected and stressed. The colour palette changes to be gloomy.
- At the end, the girl has two choices: Return to your imagination or confront reality. Either choice, the game will end, but in 2 unique ways.
Change of Concept – 9/12/25
I messaged Hayley the day after our presentation to try and figure out a more cohesive visual identity for the game, as I felt there were some conflicting ideals about the game that were obvious during the presentation. The screenshots below discuss the changes we made:
- Compromise for the art style
- Removing Ball-Jointed dolls as the focus of the dolls (they can just be a design choice)
- Paper crafts instead of laced bobbins due to the character being a little girl (and therefore it does not make sense for her to know how to make lace).
Inspirations for the world
I went to noclip.website to see how game maps actually functioned. I’ve always been inspired by Pokémon, and the older games had a notable quality of being 2D characters in a 3D and 2D environment. I really like how this looks, and want the game to have a similar quality. The video is of Jubilife City in Pokémon Platinum.
Things I liked:
- I like the mix of 2D and 3D objects. I think these can come together nicely
- The lighting makes all the difference, I think it highlights the objects well
Some Differences:
- The game is meant to be seen in a top-down view only, so plants and certain objects look weird as they are tilted to give the illusion of uniformity in that view
- 3D objects I make will be more detailed than this
Movement Prototypes
Here is a Photoshop phototype demonstrating what I plan to do with my hand mechanic. The goal is to have the hands move around objects and the characters individually, as well as being able to trigger text and the minigames.
World Objects
Some objects that could appear in the world, movable. I’d based these on kids’ themed scissors with motifs of butterflies and cats to make it cute. This can be expanded on in the game to create a cute object for the players to move around and use.
Deciding on the Game’s Name
Researching SEO and what makes a title great
As we get closer to the final stretch of our game, we realised that we hadn’t figured out what it would be called. The title of a game is extremely important. I looked at Reddit for discussions that Game designers have had with each other on this topic. One user wrote that “[t]he title is your first chance to convey to a prospective player what the game is about, then to entice them into wanting to play it. So I do think that the title is important, and ideally will attract players who would want to play that game.” Games with more abstract titles like Electronic Super Joy get away with this as their design is ‘clear and innovative’ (Reddit, 2022). With our game, we aren’t looking to necessarily innovate a genre, but more so flip the perspective and have the game be from a child’s pov. From the first world to the gameplay, we are hoping to engage the player in meaningful interaction.
Here are a few more advice I found useful, and some notes on each statement:
- We did not want to go for verbose titles, as it would clutter the game too much.
- Ideally, the title would be 3 words or fewer.
- Our audience would target people who have a higher attention span, and thus would actually want to play the game rather than just blast through it.
- SEO is important with indie games. I want the game title to be inoffensive, straight to the point and what it says on the tin.
- However, I want to avoid generic names and clutter.
- The use of these two game examples was really important, as I know what not to do with the title
- The consensus is to not make a game with a title that is 1) generic, and 2) a minor part of the actual game mechanics. Games that have succeeded with generic names are usually AAA games, like Halo and Destiny. These games don’t really have anything to do with their titles, but Reddit users think they made the words “badass” by association with the gameplay (Reddit, 2022).
Naming the actual game…
In mid-December, Hayley and I were brainstorming the names for our game. I asked Hayley what type of names she wanted to see, and she liked the idea of elegant, nature-inspired, beauty-inspired, and happy names. She is also interested in seeing if we could find some African names which would fit the theme of the main girl being black. I went and did some research on baby name sites and ended up with this list!
I wanted the title to be something sweet or alluding to her imaginary world and/or childishness, and Hayley also agreed. I had the idea of linking the word “Paracosm” as it is a phenomenon of an imaginary world that one creates, typically in childhood. People have reported using Paracosms to help them sleep, explore their creativity or even as a form of dissociation. Therefore, Paracosms and Maladaptive Daydreaming disorders can be linked to each other. These types of Paracosms can be referred to as post-traumatic paracosms (Sarah & Chutney, 2025).
Later in January, we initially decided on Omarosa: Little Artisan. It hits all the “cute” points of a title. 1) It is personal as it features a name, 2) “little” indicates that it is a child you are playing as, and 3) Artisan hints at some type of arts and crafts that the child will be making. I thought it was a really good title.
However, I did some more research on the name “Omarosa” and found it linked to a controversial participant on The Apprentice US and a former White House aide. In addition, simply searching up the name links to this person, and it would be bad for the game and its SEO to be overshadowed by this person and her controversies. Therefore, I brought it to Hayley’s attention, and we decided to change the name to the other name Hayley liked, which was Karimah.
Here are some name ideas:
- Karimah: Little Artisan
- Karimah’s Arts & Crafts
- Karimah: The Artisan
- Karimah’s Paracosm
- Karimah’s Crafts
Name Decided: ‘Karimah’s Paracosm’
Why this name?
- It has the name in the title still, indicating a personal experience.
- It refers to the Paracosm, which is Karimah’s whole world, where the player will spend the majority of the game.
- The name “Karimah” is Arabic, and it can mean “generous“, “giving” or “a friend“, which hints at her caring nature even through her conflict at home.
- It is not too cluttered.
- It seems innocent due to this, but the title will feature some of the darker elements of the story.
Lastly, here is another reason we decided on this name from this Reddit Discussion. Our chosen title is short, snappy and rolls off the tongue, which we wanted. The word “Paracosm” may sound a bit “mystical” to those who don’t know what it is as well.
References:
Sarah & Chutney (2025). How Maladaptive Daydreaming Links to OCD & Paracosms: My Experience. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6N4Y9Idj4c.
‌Reddit.com. (2021). Reddit – The heart of the internet. [online] Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedesign/comments/pntyk5/does_a_title_really_need_to_reflect_what_the_game/.
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