As it was getting difficult to get into the university since I'm travelling so far, I've started to do work from home. Since I'm not sure what game I wanted to create during the course yet I have started to do some research and brainstorming.
Since I knew creating 2D graphics was a strength of mine, I first considered making a 2D game and started looking into 2D games I knew of for inspiration. The first game that came to mind was Ori and the Blind Forest.
This platform adventure game was the first that came to mind for its beautiful graphics and sound design. There is no voice acting, and the story is told entirely through sound and graphics. Its style was also somewhat similar to my own with the semi-realism with very dramatic and contrasting lighting.
The second game that came to mind, quite similar to Ori in some ways but also very different in style, was Limbo.
Limbo is entirely in greyscale, having a much simpler style than Ori. It relies on clever music and level design to tell the story. While the art is very simple it doesn't take away anything from the game and in fact adds a very eerie and dark feel to the game, matching well with the story being told. This same developer, Play Dead, went on to develop a 3D game in a very similar style called Inside. Again the graphics are very simple but the realistic sound design, ambient lighting and muted colours create a very spooky feel for the game that contributes to the story.
All of these games above have inspired me in how they tell their stories without the need for overly complicated design. Having a passion for writing and storytelling, I knew I wanted to create a game that also told a well-crafted story in a similar way.
While the first few games I looks at for inspiration were all side-scroll platformers, I also looked into other genres I found appealing or personally took an interest in.
The second style of game I looked into was visual novels. In particular, I looked at an indie developer who I've been following on social media for many years who has been an inspiration to me in many ways.
Michaela Laws: an indie game developer, voice actor and content creator for Twitch and YouTube. She has been an inspiration to me for years with the video and game content she has created. While she has voice acted in a few animes and games, she also creates her own content mostly in the style of interactive visual novels or YouTube mini-series, similar to her most popular series Ruffled:
Her content has inspired me over the years by proving to me that you don't need many people to create a high-quality product that has an engaging story without overly fancy graphics or production.
The final genre I also looked at, and one I have been playing the most recently is roleplay games such as Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing or Terriaria.
Stardew Valley has been a recent favourite of mine, with its cute 16bit graphics, semi open-world features and interactive story that adapted to your choices and actions.
Looking at all these games and genre's I enjoy so much, I realised that they are mostly more simple games for casual gamers, as that is the level I am usually at while gaming. The majority of casual gamers now I realised was mobile gamers, including many of my friends. So going forward I decided I was probably going to make a mobile game of any genre similar to the games I've discussed above.
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