Based on the mind map I created, I confirmed that I would design this GDD with emotions as the focus.
However, emotions are a very broad topic, so I decided to create another mind map to help me determine what kind of emotion I want to portray.
When creating this mind map, I tried my best to avoid focusing on the theme of horror. I didn’t want to just make a traditional horror game; I wanted to develop the game around the emotions themselves. There can be scary elements in the game, but I don’t want horror to be the entirety of the game.
It was at this moment that I thought of the draft I had abandoned, so I subconsciously thought of the word “human.” When I wrote the word “human,” I had some ideas. I wanted to combine “human” with “emotions.” Humans possess a wide variety of emotions and are themselves carriers of emotions. I wanted to showcase the complexity of human emotions through games.
At this point, I started getting inspiration from the draft I had previously abandoned and devised two ideas, asking for feedback from others (these two ideas are discussed in the foundational ideas section of the restart chapter).