Less blog, more work

Right now, I still haven’t nailed down exactly what I want to get from Semester 1. I want my work this year to be appropriate to show employers in a portfolio once I’ve finished my M.A. It would make sense to play on my strengths of mechanics and concepts but it’s becoming more and more obvious that employers are only interested in people with diverse skill set, so I really want to expand my skills in the next year. I’ve considered going back to the dreaded Maya because I think it would help alot in the long run to have that added to my skills. I just wish I had made more effort getting to grips with it in the second and third year of my B.A.

After a discussion on Friday with the M.A course leader and some other M.A students, I’ve sort of got a handle on the direction I want to take. I’m really keen to explore relationships between mechanics and level design. As of yet I’m not sure whether it’s a better idea to create my own mechanics to show off what I can do with my own creations or take the limitations of already existing mechanics and show off what I can do with them. For a while I’ve thought it would be an interesting idea to design levels for existing titles to work within their constraints but I don’t want my M.A. to come up as some ‘fan art/fiction’ instead of something professional that’s going to really impress people when they see it.

I’ve thought I could maybe do a combination, create my own levels and mechanics for my own unique games, taking existing mechanics into a new game and maybe designing levels for an existing game with a new mechanic. I’d like to have as much creative control as I can over my projects because I know, when/if I do get a job in the industry I’ll have little to no real creative control over the titles I work under.

Some games with interesting mechanics/themes;

Dark Cloud/Chronicle – The player collects resources in dungeons to rebuild the villages/towns in the world. NPC can be moved into houses, but some often have requires e.g (one person might want to live next to a river). As part of the story the player must travel into the future versions of their to advance the story.

Majora’s Mask – The player must collect and use a variety of masks to gain different abilities and even transform into different species.

Oddworld – The player can possess enemies and take control of all their actions. The player can also speak with other NPC’s using ‘gamespeak’ shouting introductions to other characters to escape.

Okami – The player controls of a wolf with the abilities to use the ‘Celestial Brush’ to paint stars in the sky, change from night to day, make flowers/trees bloom, slash enemies, draw broken bridges and much more.

Portal – Using a portal gun, the player can create portal entrances and exit points to solve puzzles.

Ape Escape – Using a large net and variety of tools, the objective of each stage to catch a certain number of escaped monkeys.

Shadow of the Colossus – Traversing large open fields, the player must hunt down and kill 16 Colossi, massive, boss like creatures which the player must climb to stab its weak points.

Wind Waker  - Sailing large open world on the sea, taking control of the wind directions to solve puzzles and sail.