flight - game design document

Flight – Game Design Document • 2.8.2011

A Game For PC and MacintoshCopyright 2011 Duo Cat

Parlin Chan • Cecilia Irvine • Brittany Long • Luke Petrolekas • Jamie Tucker

Flight – Game Design Document • 2.8.2011Parlin Chan • Cecilia Irvine • Brittany Long • Luke Petrolekas • Jamie Tucker

Game OverviewPitch

From decades of war and pollution the Earth has become a deso-late wasteland. No plants grow, and the air is thick with toxins. Humans and most life have long since become extinct. Except for one...

As the player you patrol the barren wastelands of what is left of this world. Your last mission in life is to bring the environment back from the brink of destruction.


Game OverviewBasic Concept

Story

The basic concept of this game is to offer the player an experience to enjoy the experience of flight without the weight and demands of mechanized aviation. Isolating the player and giving her the sense of agency and capability to create change to return the planet to its natu-ral habitat, correcting the errors of the past, most especially untethered industrialization and the military-industrial complex.

The back story in the game is the Earth has been ravaged by pollution and decay, brought about by industrialization, war and environmental neglect. The player assumes control over Inua, the last human on the planet, who must bring peace to the land and correct the errors of humanity by restoring the ecosystem of the Earth so that the land can once again prosper.

The objective of the game will be introduced by overlaying text at the begin-ning of the game, allowing the player to begin the game without the interfer-ence of a cut scene.

The end result will be a land untainted by humankind and the remnants of civilization overgrown by plants and inhabited by animals. The land will be happy and abundant with life. At the end of the game when all your life force is spent you leave Earth to exist on a higher plane.


Game OverviewTone

Objective

The tone of the game is designed to be a primarily relaxed expe-rience, however in later levels architecture and geometry, along with enemies, will complicate the plot by introducing through visual imagery how this imagined humanity collapsed from its own industrialization; that is to say that the world will become more dark and repressed.

The objective of the game is to clear the planet of all the pollution and pollution inducing agents in order to replenish the health of the planet and return it to what it was prior to the existence of the human race. To do so, Inua must spread out her very soul across the land by gliding close to the Earth and nearly brushing the veg-etation below. The particles absorb the toxins from the Earth and destroy them, at the cost of Inua’s vitality. The only way to replen-ish Inua’s vitality is to reach for the skies and to glide, high up in the sky, beyond the clouds. Above the ever present clouds lies a sea of tranquility. It is here that Inua finds her peace of mind and the clear blue sky.


The Player is a young girl in her mid-to-late-teens, named Inua, set on a long and solo journey to heal the polluted lands of Earth. She has the power to convert her life force into a healing essence that allows the ravaged land and plants to flourish, while chasing away the pollution.

The name Inua comes from the Inuit concept of ‘soul,’ similar to manna. “For arctic people, human and animals are equal - All life has the same kind of soul or ‘life es-sence’ (Inua).” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inua)

Game OverviewCharacter


GameplayWalkthrough

After powering up (or booting), is there a title screen, what does it look like, is there an options screen, what are the choices, is there an animated sequence, can it be bypassed and how...

Upon boot, the title screen appears.


GameplayWalkthrough

When the game starts, the player is immediately thrust into the game: the player must take immediate control of the glider that faces a downward slope and attempt to put the glider into level flight. Once the glider has reached level flight, the player will be informed briefly of the goal and some brief back story which will introduce the motivation for the goal. The text will also act as a brief tutor, guiding the player through the controls.

In the tutorial, the player will be conditioned to perform the heal-ing action with the sound of subtle chimes, and a feedback loop will be established associating the toxic areas with brown areas of the coverage map and green areas with revitalized areas. To encourage flight, healing can only be performed in the area above the clouds. To reach the area, the player must hover over a thermal, which if taken to the top, will take the player above the clouds. The player also uses the thermal as an elevator, returing Inua to a higher position, allowing the player to reach farther to reach areas.

In the tutorial, the player will also learn about what items he as available at his disposal to assist this process.


GameplayA.I.

Opponents, such as predators and human machines of war, are added to increase the difficulty of the game as the player pro-ceeds to higher levels. The opponent will attempt to disrupt Inua from following the path. If Inua comes into contact with the op-ponent, her life force is reduced. The opponents are randomly placed in the level. The only way she can get through them is

to fire laser at the opponent, which defeat it. Another type of opponents are environment, such as wind and rain, are added to slow Inua down. They do not reduce her life force and might affect cer-tain ability that Inua has.


GameplayLevel Design

Levels are constrained to a large boxed environment. For practi-cality of setting limits the first level will be a mountain valley. With the ceiling constrained by the altitude the air-vehicle is able to at-tain. There is a heavy blanket of clouds above the landscape that the player must punch through to be able to recharge their Life Force Meter.

Example of a Level and Po-tential gameplay pattern. The Player switches between climbing for altitude and div-ing towards the ground dis-persing their Life Force.


Game InterfaceCamera and HUD

The player will have two meters to monitor: the life force meter at the bot-tom of the screen, and the coverage map. The life force meter will appear when Inua heals the Earth and when she is up in the clouds recharging. The coverage map will inform the player what areas of the map are complete and which are still toxic. When the coverage map is clear of residual toxins, the level is complete.

The game will be rendered as a one player 3D game viewed in third person. The player will be situated in front of the camera, on her glider. The camera will rotate slightly depending on the directional input from the controller to give better sight to where the Player is flying.


Game InterfaceControls

The Player controls the glider’s altitude and direction by using the arrow keys. The glider is in constant motion and the player cannot directly control the speed. Two buttons are used for controlling the Life Force of the player. By pressing Control on PC, Command on Mac, and B on the Microsoft 360 USB controller, the player is able to toggle their Life Force dispensing on or off. The player’s attack, the Life Force LASER is accessed by press-ing the space bar and the A button on the controller. The menu is accessable by pressing Enter on the keyboard and Start on the con-troller.


Game InterfaceScreen Flow

flight - game design document

Education

game overviewpitchas

game overviewcharacter

game starts

game overviewthe tone

game overviewthe basic

experience of flight

level flight

toencourage flight