SuperSugoiSoftStudios DevDiary #01: First Steps

Yes: we have finally started developing! After months of researching, studying and planning, we decided where we should start, and we saw our first opportunity here: The Edge Get Into Games Challenge 2013: ‘Do no harm’.

Our first project is an entry for this contest. As for the genre, we went for the point-and-click adventure. We found many wars to convey the theme “do no harm” via gameplay means – such as beating a game without killing a single enemy – but we preferred to bet on the narrative side to fill this requirement.

From all the aspects we could prioritize from a point-and-click adventure, we started from the space. We decided that the game is going to be set inside a simple house. For this task we researched many house blueprints in order to come up with something reliable: a house simple enough to be recognizable as one, and reliable enough to be coherent to the main character’s profile.

The thing is: although I have many ideas regarding housing, room and furniture placing, there is not way I can guarantee that the house I built is going to make sense to others as it makes to me. Without researching, studying and understanding real house blueprints, I come up with ideas like these:

 Absolutely out of proportion, I can even feel ashamed of this. I am the artist, so I was in charge of coming up with a reasonable house for our main character. Notice that there is absolutely no concern regarding proportions. The sizes are arbitrary, and because of that the bathroom is just as wide as a common door (90cm). Just imagine taking a bath in this bathroom. I’ve already lived in cramped spaces and I can assure that it is not comfortable.

Well, that would be okay if the other rooms were proportional to that, but take a look at that study!

We could use a small house or a cramped apartment as the setting for this point-and-click adventure, but this is not our goal. We wanted a medium-sized house, reasonable enough to look real and simple enough to serve as the setting, not the main point in the game.

Needless to say, my first prototype was rejected.

After researching house blueprints, common house sizes, house sizing per capita and per income, we came up with a house.

We provided the house with a living room, dining room, kitchen, two bathrooms, porch, garage, basement, two rooms and a study. We also decided the points of view relevant to the actions to be taken inside the game.

And then, we moved on to the next step, which was systematized the narrative.

Until the next DevDiary!