Capstone Blog Post 7: New Direction

After receiving feedback on the new things we implemented from last week we decided to shift our direction in terms of both the games design and the stage design. Before our stages were based off of themes and then color was integrated into them with whitespace. This week after receiving feedback we have decided to stop basing our stages off of themes and instead made a generic but interesting level with no theme. In doing this we stripped away certain things that detracted from the previous designs. The biggest one being negative space. The negative space had no real purpose other than to keep the space from being too visually confusing but doing so detracted from the gameplay mechanics. Now all of our stage is in color with no negative space until after the beginning of the match. An idea that was brought up in the discussion was the change of theme to being about the cold war given that our two colors were blue and red. We liked this idea but we didn’t necessarily want to pigeon-hole ourselves with this theme. So we thought about it more and boiled it down to this line of thinking. The cold war was a battle of ideologies, whoever subscribed to that ideology became part of a side. Wars are about two tribes of beings fighting over territory and control of a region. So we decided to re-contextualize our game. Our new context is that players are playing as the chosen champion of their kingdoms color. We use the word kingdom more in the abstract sense because it allows us more freedom in theming and time period while also giving context for how players create color on the map.

Before, players could not control the aspects of the map or the color. Now, we have made it so players can control where their color is on the map. To do so, players hit switches in sections of the map with either their sword or if they have good aim, projectiles. Once they hit the switches that piece of territory becomes that players color. The more color you have on the map the more places you can be stealthed in your color. Dynamic lights suspended from platforms have bulbs that when hit with a sword or projectile also change color to your players color. Color blending in this level occurs passively as players fight over territory. What becomes interesting though is that the lights in the stage can be pushed around to reveal players in their territory. While visually very bold, we also think both in gameplay and in visual looks that this is the new direction we want to go with the game.