Initial work, storytelling and audio

We have now worked on Remembrance for more than three weeks. A lot of things happened already during the first few days. Many decisions and changes were made, both big and small ones, especially when it came to the actual gameplay design. To be honest, in the original design document made before the initial pitch we didn’t include any specific design decisions at all, since we had no designers in the group at that point.

From the start we had an idea of the player being able to collect something to help explain the world and story; perhaps tokens or runestones with a weird foreign language written on it. Despite the fact that we wrote in the design document that we wanted to break conventions, the part about collecting physical objects didn’t really fit into the game. We also wrote that we wanted to explore the possibility of different disciplines working together in unusual ways – for example audio or music helping to tell a story in a more significant way. That idea gave birth to one of the biggest initial changes: the idea of “collecting” audio.

After refining the idea we agreed on telling the story solely via audio. No text, no (clear) voices, nothing except sound. We also agreed on creating seven unique “points of interest” in the world, each with a unique meaning for the main storyline. These points could be old temples, caves, or perhaps a giant tree in the middle of a field. The storyline is not something that is happening as you’re there, but rather something that you all of a sudden can recall happened on the spot. Hence the title of the game, Remembrance. Exactly what happened, or the main character's connection to the events, remains vague and unclear. It is up to the player to interpret.

Telling a story only via sound is an odd idea, and we still don’t know how well it will work. As a game writer, had I not been the project leader, I would probably still have no clue how the sound engineers would solve it. I gave them a manuscript, and told them to rework it into an audio file without voice acting. At the moment they’re making something that reminds me of a radio drama with sound effects.

The process is ongoing, and hopefully we’ll be able to find out soon enough how well it will work. If there’s a lot of problems, then on to plan B! But what is plan B? We’re not quite sure yet.

Next blog post, focusing on the initial graphical concept work, will be written by our lead graphical atist and art director Gabriel. Stay tuned!

- Lukas

A beginning

Prologue
As of this first developer update, our game, currently called Remembrance, is still not much more than a school project. It will remain a school project for the next 8-10 weeks. What happens after these next two months we have yet to see, but hopefully the group will continue to work on the game.

At the moment we are 17 students working together on a daily basis. The group consists of all the disciplines that should be involved in making a game: graphic artists (2D, 3D and animation), sound designers, musicians, programmers, designers, and game writers. All of us study our respective disciplines at the University of Skövde in Sweden, currently in the second year out of three.

In the beginning, four of the members in the group got together to pitch the game idea for the rest of the students for the upcoming school project. The basic idea was to make something unconventional. In the pre-pitch phase, we created some concept art and music to use during the pitch (together with a far too long design document), which will be included below:

Pre-pitch concept art by Gabriel Björk Stiernström.



Pre-pitch concept art by Gabriel Björk Stiernström.

Pre-pitch concept music by Gustav Arneback.

The game

The point of the game is quite hard to describe without spoiling the mechanics, something that we on day one agreed on trying to avoid. We want the mechanics to come as a surprise to the player. This will also in some ways compromise the openness of this development blog.

As already noted, we wanted the game to be unconventional. When we use the word unconventional, we’re not talking about revolutionizing the game industry. Rather, we had the idea to make a game that challenges what you, the player, have learned from all those years you’ve played video games. Something that forces you to think differently, and act differently. We won’t even be close to making it as extreme as Antichamber (2013), but daring to try new things will give you new possibilities to explore different parts of the world around you.

The game as we think of it right now falls in the same category as games such as Journey (2012) and Flower (2009), which are both adventure/art games. We want our game to be beautiful, and we want to give the player an opportunity to explore an abandoned but stunning world. Graphically, we're aiming to make a stylistic game, taking inspiration from the newly released Firewatch (2016). We chose this approach in part because it would suit the world and theme of the game, but also so that we would be able to create something presentable in only ten weeks.

The goal for the player is to help the main character rediscover its past. (We're writing "it" since the character shouldn't be thought of as a man or a woman. We want it to be a humanoid, sharing some aspects with a regular human, but not much more than that.) The main character, and others of its kind, used to inhabit this world, but for reasons unknown they're all gone now. for some reason though, the main character has returned, but without any memory of who it is, or what role it played in the now abandoned world.

Around the world there will be seven “points of interest”, all including a specific memory (a flashback of sorts), one by one helping the main character remember what has happened. When all seven places and memories have been found, the player will hopefully have at least a hunch of what happened in the world.

In the upcoming development blogs we will talk more about all the different disciplines, initially focusing on graphics and music.

Stay tuned!

- Lukas