Game Concept


Concept Statement

The game tells about the ancient times when a princess woke up and found herself landing on a small island. She losses her memory on how she got into the island in the first place. In order to find her way home, the princess has to force herself to move on the great journey. Skills and abilities will be acquired during the journey which strengthen the princess’s survivor experience as she finds her way home during the journey.

Genre of Game & Concept creation process

This is a 2D horizontal adventure game. Players use running and jumping to destroy enemies in a 2D level world, and pass through the levels to win the final victory. The inspiration of the game comes from when I was a kid and which Master Takahashi’s adventure Island IV was my favorite game. I enjoyed the scene of Master Takahashi jumping and eating fruits. I gradually liked antique illustrations as I grew older. This antique 2D horizontal version of the adventure game is created based on the combination of my favorite parts of the game which includes some creative story-lines that attract me when I was little. The background of the game is mainly based on unique colorful ink and wash landscape paintings as it was extremely popular ten years ago. As a creative game designer, I strongly sensed that improving graphic design based on Master Takahashi’s adventure Island might be helpful in gaming experience. Players use the left and right keys to move the characters left and right and the space bar to jump, collect food all the way to supply the player's health, accumulate gold ingots to gain points and enhance player’s levels in the game. Players can also destroy monsters by stepping on them. Majority of the villains will freeze and slide to the opposite side of the player and disappeared in the game. At the meantime, the effect of changing is added and eliminating the player's movement to enhance the player's sense of vision and experience. While eliminating the villains, players have the opportunity to rescue the imprisoned island residents on the way through customs, and finally rescued the prince detained by the queen and live happily after. In the game, players not only experiencing the beautifully designed views but also enjoy the creation of wonderful story-line. Besides that, the background music and the sound effects of the characters will also bring joy to the players to trigger their curiosity in order to finish the game by completing all designed missions.

Audience and competitive analysis

Currently, the number of players in the Asia-Pacific game market is relatively large, and they are also my main target group for this game due to the fact that majority of the Asian country are lack of simple game which does not required a lot of efforts playing it. Most of the youngsters in this era prefer simple and affordable entertainments which allows them to release their stress regarding their work and study. According to majority of Asian historical and cultural background, the culture of the ancient costume series attracts large group of young people in the contemporary era. People are attracted on ancient costumes and ancient dramas which influence them on selecting their daily outfits in real life.  

At present, there are less amount of 2D horizontal games in the market that are produced based on ancient story.  Ancient 2D games are a good selling point and opportunity to expand the current market by increasing the number of attempts and pursuits of young people. In the meantime, the game designed based on ancient costume theme is more exquisite and detailed than other games in market as most of them are inspired by the modern society. The combination of adventurous mission levels and interesting story-line will definitely be admired by most players in the market and can achieve great success in the market. In addition, the targeted customers are also set to be children because the words used and story-lines will teach them a great lesson in the reality. Parents will be encouraged to purchase the game as the game will benefits their children in their education journey. 

Game treatment and concept art

The early period of the game will mainly go through some easy and simple tasks to allow players understanding proper ways to control the characters especially for those who never played 2D game before, for example, children who are between 5-8 years old. When those missions are completed, the players will then move into the wonderland. Before entering into the wonderland, the main story-line, the player will face a head villain. The player must defeat the head villain in order to proceed to the wonderland. This mission is designed to acknowledge players that there will be a head villain, the boss, in every mission. After defeating the head villain, player will then move to the wonderland. The wonderland is designed of player to move into slightly hard missions. Wonderland is divided into land, sea and sky. Player will experience a different story-line with different theme. Each them is ruled by a head villain which the difficulty level will increase when proceeded to next mission. The gold ingots collected during the journey are used to upgrade or build the weapons. In addition, players will also gain their experience point in order to learn new skills which might increase their chance to defeat stronger villains. Player is able to save the residents who locked by the villains throughout the journey. After defeated all the villains, the players will final villain who has the key to unleashed the prince. The prince has the ability to send her back to her hometown which will be the end of the story. 

The background of the main scenes of the game is mainly based on ink and wash landscape paintings. The effect of wonderland is created based on the mentioned techniques. The resources can be found on copyright owner: 588Ku

The construction of the scene is completed through patches. The patches are created in different shape and size to reach the needs of the map. For example, there are stone platforms, stone steps, and suspended boxes as the main scene platforms in order to make sure that both players and the enemies can stand and move on this platform. The resources are sourced from Copyright: pngtree

The painting style of the player character is the ancient style series, its painting is very detailed. The player character is dressed in ancient and elegant antique clothing with golden accessories. There are different designed movements, for example, walking and jumping movements and  the movement when attacking the enemy. The player will acquire different movements follow by the game story. In order to sharped the sense of the players, different sound effects are created to meet the actions in the game. To put this into perspective, jumping and colliding food and gold ingots are accompanied by crisp sound effects, prompting players to searching for more gold ingots. Moreover, different sound effects are also designed when players are fighting several types of enemy.  

 

There are several types of enemies. As a case in point, enemy who has the ability to fly and enemy who walk on the ground. These mentioned enemies will actively approach and attack the player when the player enters their range of activity. At this time, when the player destroys them, they can also have the explosion effect and sound effect of destroying the enemy. At the same time, destroying the enemy can increase the player's own experience point. During the clearance process, players also need to find the detained island residents in some hidden doors. Some of the missions will require players to solve the puzzle in order to get the clue to proceed to the next level. These will set the game into difficult and challenging level. The screen design for the puzzle will also be different depends on the current environment. It will be either darker or colorful. Moreover, some adjustments will be needed to match the game scenes such as designing broken bridges, continuous jumping, gravity design and radar scanning. After passing through the missions, there will also be some animation effects which the player are able to watch a short video of rescued residents’ life which makes the player more enjoy the joy of success. The last player character of the game talks about facing a final enemy queen. She is the queen of snakes and seized the prince of the island country.  The enemy queen has the highest difficulty to defeat. It takes a certain amount of experience to defeat the queen. The player needs to learn high level of skill to defeat the queen. After defeating the queen, the prince is saved and the player are able to send the princess back via the magical power of the prince. In the end, the player will drive the princess to become a brave and intelligent person. The player will also learn some lessons throughout the game.


Reference

Master Takahashi's Adventure Island:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Takahashi%27s_Adventure_Island_IV

2020 Global Gamers per region with year-on-year growth rates: 

https://venturebeat.com/2020/05/08/newzoo-2-7-billion-gamers-will-spend-159-3-billion-on-games-in-2020/

Ancient costumes influence people on selecting their daily outfits in real life:

https://nextshark.com/hanfu-china-fashion/

588Ku: https://pngtree.com/freepng/ink-antiquity-landscape-traditional-chinese-painting_4117645.html

pngtree: https://pngtree.com/freebackground/fantasy-brick-wall-background-light-effect_60...

All roles: http://www.aigei.com/home/favorite

Art work of  cover image by Suvi Yang.

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.