Group Project: Into The World Outside

Mapping The Space

Now that much of the work on our initial tutorial level inside the scientist's workshop has been done, we have started to think about the world outside, as we are now hoping to build a level from later on in the game that takes place in a location outside the workshop. Tristan has been doing some really good work developing our narrative/backstory so that we have a better understanding of the reasons for our world's current state, rather than just some vague industrial disaster. Broadly, we have landed on the idea that our game area is a self sustaining compound run by a scientific research corporation. The area includes living quarters for the scientists and their families, as well as research facilities and food production. Within this compound, the player will visit key locations to activate water purification devices in order to reach the final location, a massive power plant that is responsible for the toxicity.

Tristan's initial sketch listing some possible level locations within the research compound

 As the environment concept artist, I've found this sketch very useful for generating ideas, as the key elements pointed out will be the primary locations for each of the levels in the game.

The Farm

Looking at Tristan's sketch, I had the idea to expand the turbine location into a fully fledged farm. It made sense to have a food supply onsite, and I also just think a dystopian, derelict farm level could be an extremely atmospheric location for our game. 

A collection of farm related sci-fi concepts for inspiration

Inspiration from Playdead's Inside

Playdead's Inside is one of my absolute favourite indie games, and despite it only being around 3 hours long, playing it for the first time in 2016 is still far and away one of the most memorable gaming experiences I've ever had. I've since gone back to play it several times, and as soon as I had the idea to flesh out our wind turbine location into a farm, my first thought was to revisit Inside for some inspiration. The game's vaguely presented story seems to centre around a scientific research facility, but before reaching this location, the player navigates through a dystopian farm area. Here, it appears to me that some sort of parasite has killed off most of the livestock, while a few surviving pigs have been put into a hyper aggressive state by the parasite, which can be seen wiggling around at their rear. The level, as with the rest of the game, features an extremely heavy, gloomy atmosphere. I'd love to carry some of this through to our game through my concepts, and so I went through and captured some frames of the level from Playdead's dystopian puzzler.

Screen captures from Inside's Farm level, early in the game

Silo Bots

From the images above, I particularly love the silo silhouettes in the background as I find their looming presence intimidating despite the fact that they're just static objects. This got me onto the idea of having giant Silo robots that patrol the farm, watching for trespassers with a large spotlight beam. I made a quick sketch of the idea while on the train: 

Silo bot that patrols the farm

With this idea, the level could function as a sort of stealth-puzzle section where you have to solve the environment puzzle required for progression, while under the constant pressure of avoiding the Silo's searching spotlight beam.

Besides being a guard to the farm, the silo would previously have functioned as a storage and cultivation bot, although now that nothing seems to grow these original functions are void and the Silo is reduced to a looming sentinel.

Farm Level Concept

Derelict Farm Environment Concept

Above is my concept for the farm environment. I've incorporated the Silo bots, which here could potentially be partially broken down (legs no longer functional) and stuck in the ground, but still searching with their spotlights. I also had the idea that after a certain progression point is reached by the player, one of the bots suddenly gets back up and regains mobility, making it a greater threat, like the level has entered its second 'boss' phase. Of course this is all subject to what is within scope on the technical side though. The focal point of the level is the mill/turbine on the hill, and this would likely be the point the player is trying to reach in order to complete their objective. It's probably clear that with this concept piece I took heavy inspiration from Inside, as I wanted to experiment with a similarly muted palette, and I just generally wanted to try to produce something with a similar feel to it to see if it appealed to other members of the team.

Overall I think this concept has been fairly successful, and I hope it will be useful to the team when production of our next level begins. For now my group project work will likely be centred on exploring possibilities for other levels detailed on Tristan's map, unless production goes ahead on this level, in which case I will be doing more specific concept work for this section of the game.

Thanks for reading!