While thinking about my game idea, I realised the concept was somewhat similar in theme to an art project I had previously done when I was taking a fine art course.
It centred around my previous experiences as a child with a "ghost".
When I was about 5 years old, almost every night, I would hear a male voice talking to me while I stared at the darkness of my bedroom. While I saw slender humanoid shadows walking around on my walls I knew the voice wasn’t them. The shadows felt dark and ominous like they were taken from a nightmare. But this voice was warm and gentle, his soft-spoken tone made me feel safe and soothed me. Every night I fell asleep to his voice.
Looking back on this experience now I believe it was childish overactive imagination as I was often making up imaginary friends or stories in my head, however, I still hold that time close to my heart and believe it was a needed comfort during my childhood.
Since this experience meant so much to me as a child, I did a series of images during my previous art course showing my experience with this ghost as he followed me throughout my life until I stopped hearing and seeing him as a young teenager.
I remember he was always in black and white with round glasses, the lenses always glowing bright white hiding most of his face. I thought this was coincidentally quite similar to the style of Limbo, as the main character is all black with white glowing eyes.
With such a similar theme to my original idea, I decided I wanted to use this story from my childhood as inspiration.
Looking back at the other inspirational material that I started my project with I saw that Ori and the Blind Forest had two main characters for a large section of the game, as the two characters help each other through the environment to reach the goal of the level.
Since this childhood ghost of mine was like a guardian and a comfort to me, I decided to have him in a similar role to the main characters of Ori and the Blind Forest. My idea was similar in that this main guardian character could have a companion that they had to guide and help through the levels, whether in the form of puzzles or protecting them as they go through the level.
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