Week 6 marked a major pivot in our design process. Last week, the design team was iterating with Chris Klug for feedback on player verbs. However, a consistent pain point was that there were always too many verbs that seemed too unclear. Thus, on Monday night the design team made a bold decision to pivot into just the verb and design pillar of “communication”, forsaking the other ideas in exchange for the ability to gain more clarity on the specific verb chosen. Despite being a drastic change in direction, care was made to respect the artistic artifacts already created and integrate the existing pieces of world building that still fit while trimming out the bits that didn’t.
Design
The verb communicate had always been one of the verbs that stuck out in Chris design meetings. The concept of a massive creature communicating with something small inside of itself in an unknown language is compelling on many levels. In particular, there was a need for a powerful metaphor that would be convey the mystery of communication, while being understandable enough that the player could pick up on patterns. For this gap, the design team decided to lean in on music as the defining metaphor, and use this relationship to drive the rest of the design.
With a week left before halves presentation, the design team had a lot of work that needed to be done in order to present the concept of communication via music clearly. The first step in the process was to unify the design team itself on this metaphor of communication. To do this, the team created an aural palette and spent a day sharing thoughts on aural style.
In addition, quick research was done on games that used music, and both how the music was integrated as well as what type of interfaces the games used to convey the musical information. Moving into the weekend, the design team created a short visualization that would help convey the concept of call and response with this whale.
Art
In the last full week before halves, the art team was finishing up final explorations and iterations. As feedback from the previous artifacts, Yifan moved on to do quicker shape studies instead of more detailed environmental concepts, with exception for a few key moments the design team requested to be visualized.
Meanwhile, Harry spent the week adding refinement to the detailed sketches.
Finally, Joy made a variety of character mockups using different instruments as inspiration.
