Images and ideas

Hello,
back again with some new images and game ideas :)

The first image I put together to have a play with lighting and to try some silhouetted Victorian assets. As you can see, it''s pretty menacing. With the 'Bates' style house in the background and the distant London skyline beyond that...It is perhaps in a London suburb...which judging from Roman Polanksi's Oliver Twist, are semi-rural..which would explain the hills :)


















The next image is more a test of scale. I think this would look really cool....kind of wide screen....1280 - 512. Which I think is influenced by 'Keith Reynolds can't make it tonight' (by Felix Massie) and Nilfa's Knytt games. I think it looks nice to see detailed things on a fairly small screen..and it's a good way to cheat a bit with the animating :D but having said that...I'm sure I'll be picky with the animating no matter what.











As for the actual GAME in all this...I'm not entirely sure.
With a story or basic narrative, however I have a few different ideas which in each case lends themselves to different game mechanic ideas.

I'm pretty sure this creature is going to be a big part of this game, which gives a more supernatural edge to it....just the kind that I like too :D Creepy creatures.
I like the idea of the creature being found in a cave which has been discovered by mining children. The game could be entirely based in this cave or the mines with children, which would be pretty much the same as the Descent, but without the gore.
Or.... The creature could be discovered by the children, then captured by their masters to be taken to London in the hope of profiting from it in freak shows. This is just an idea to get the monster to London, which offers some good opportunities with its visuals (as you can see in the image above).
This is where my ideas split...Is the creature a Friend or Foe? Although in the first image in this post looks very creepy, I find something quite cute about the creature. If you look at the Mine image at the end of my last post, it is almost like the boy and the creature are exploring together, and the creature is not sneaking up on the boy as I intended.
Here are my ideas so far:

Friend
A boy finds the creature in the mines and befriends it. When the Master of the boy discovers the creatures he takes it to London to claim his fortune.
Here it is split again.

Play as the boy to save your strange new friend from it's captor's...

• Perhaps a old Prince of Persia style traverse through London to the place where the creature is being held.
• Assuming the creature is saved already, and you must guide it through the streets of London, in a Sleep Walker style. Hiding him in shadows or giving it commands to Run, Jump, Duck etc. You help the creature to escape London and beyond, to get it back home. This could be done in an Abe's Oddysee style or a Monkey Island style point and click.

Play as the creature who frees himself or is saved by the boy..

• Help street kids with their struggle to survive by hunting down their cruel Masters and gobbling them up, or scaring them off. Become a Vigilante duo, set on ridding the city of it's evil.
  
• Using the Prince of Persia idea again, traverse the streets of London using shadows..again like Abe's Oddysee or a 'Sneak 'Em Up' like Metal Gear.

Foe
It could still be based in the mines, which I think the Foe idea works well with. But, of coarse it still works with it being in London too :)
Again, we could play as a boy, the creature, or even a man..?...?..?

Play as the Boy who discovers it in the mines..Or in London.

• A classic deadly game of cat and mouse....perhaps similar to the Scrabanian or Paramonian Temples in Abe's Oddysee...where the player is having to maneuver through the torturous and unstable mine shafts, while being chanced by one or many of the creatures...without much time to contemplate the route for fear of being gobbled up by your pursuers.

• Play as a boy who must hunt down the escaped creature as it terrorises the street children of London. Which could be more a detective game...where you could discover the patterns and habits of the creature, to then use them against it, setting traps in particular areas of the city that it seems to frequent most. This could be done in a point and click style. It can also work with playing as a man, or actual detective.

Playing as the creature could again be an attempt to escape London and return home, or it could be a opportunity for the creature to have an almost endless amount of food and fun.

• The game could be one that is simply timed, and the aim to be to scare as many people or animals as possible. Running through the streets and finding the areas which contain the most amount of people. Which would mean multiple play through's to find the best streets for the job.
  
• Escape London, taking out anyone who gets in the way. A perhaps GTA way of going about it..on in 2D....kill or be killed...kill people at your own discretion...the only goal is to get home. What seems like the entire city is after you, there's a large bounty on your head.
• Explore the city. A more mellow take on the game. Slower paced and concentrating on discovering some beautiful cityscape scenery. This would also involve hiding from humans. Abe's Oddysee + Prince of Persia.

I think that's about it for the ideas for now....Though I do have a working title for this project....seeing as it is set in the 1800's, I'm calling it '1800'....
Or, another idea is a take on idea of a cave dwelling creature in this time...Charles Darwin published his groundbreaking study 'on the origin of species' in 1859...so I could give it a subtitle..
1800: origin of species
I think it sounds quite good. And considering how much my partner and I struggled to come up with a name for a our graduate game..I'm pretty keen to get some kind of a placeholder in now!

For historians out there, I am aware that a ban on women and children mining was passed in 1842...which mean the game would have to be based before that time and is a long way off the Darwin link...however...it could be an illegal mining operation ;)

Anyway..
I hope people are liking the ideas, and getting as excited as I am :)
If anyone has any comments or ideas you wish to share, please let me know. you can comment on this post or email me at gillespionage@gmail.com

Thanks