At the beginning, I intended to create a simple horror game. Back then, I had played a lot of horror games, so naturally, I created a simple “game poem” and a presentation PPT.
The name of the game was originally called “chase”
My main idea at that time was mainly about dark and closed scenes, terrifying sounds and monsters, which would put psychological pressure and oppression on the players.
But actually, during this period, I had been playing the game “Kingdom Come: Deliverance II”. In this game, doing bad things would lose reputation, helping the villagers would gain reputation, and then gradually leading to the final happy ending. In the dream, I gained the recognition of the game’s protagonist Henry’s father Martin. This fascinated me a lot, so I decided to change my idea.
Screenshot of the “Kingdom Come: Deliverance II” Steam page
This week, I learned how space itself tells stories. Through mood boards and short stick figure storyboards, I explored how light, wind and silence express emotions without any dialogue. My previous blog explained that I wanted to make a game expressing despair and terror. But when I adjusted the lighting and rhythm, I found that the same scene could also carry warmth and tenderness, so I tried different emotions. I made an moodboard（Fig.1） and drew a small storyline（Fig.2）. I tried to tell my story to the players merely through scene narrative with very few words. This can help them better understand how environmental stories work, as well as small spatial details, such as the night, the combination of benches and street lamps, which can contain a lot of information. Now it seems that my work has been successful. Maybe I will continue to change my thoughts about my game in my future work.
Figure.1 Moodboard.
Figure.2 StoryBoard
Sources：https://store.steampowered.com/app/1771300/2/