PROPOSAL FOR WINDOSILL 2.0

(1)

PROPOSAL FOR

WINDOSILL 2.0

Studio Elements Practicum IMD362

Presented by: Ashley Rimando Dave Madden Keng Kuoch Michelle Olson Scott Klingenberg Stacie Rajkovics

(2)

If Windosill1 is the whimsical dream world of a child, then Windosill2 is the dream of that same child on a family vacation. The look of version 2 is similar to that of the first but with a mysterious creature locked inside of a strange hotel lobby. Lush musical scores mixed with ambient synths will enhance the game experience. The puzzles will follow the same structure as the original but through multiple screens. The levels will have themes that are reflective of a childhood vacation such as a carnival, a beach, or a dark cave. Other features include character customization options obtained through unique collectables and multiple endings.

Windosill2 begins where Windosill1 ends. Continuing with the theme of scene 10 from Windosill1, the player boxcar follows a path that leads through a door, and out into the night sky. Consumed by the darkness of space, the player character is mesmerized by a few illuminated stars that shoot, spiral, and explode when mouse clicked. The stars slowly illuminate to reveal a constellation of stars connected to create a pathway through the sky. The room lights up from the

light of the stars to reveal the Windosill2 game title and main musical theme. An elevator

floating in space awaits the player character as he makes his way along the constellation to the

end of the pathway where Windosill2 begins.

When the lights of all of the stars become activated, a star shaped block falls near the boxcar. The block follows the boxcar as if attached by an invisible rope, and is carried through the elevator door to the next level. The screen turns black and an clear ding is heard. The player is introduced to the main hub of the game. An elevator door opens at the bottom left of a hotel lobby decorated in muted traditional hotel colors. Located in the center of the room is a giant stone archway facing toward the screen that contain holes of different basic shapes. Inside the archway is a cute but dangerous creature locked inside a multicolored cage. Above the archway are empty toy shelves. When the player’s boxcar enters the room, the star block attached to it suddenly flies into a hole in the archway. At that exact same moment, a star shaped light turns on above the elevator, and the doors open again. The player character enters into the first level of Windosill2.

Additional levels produce different shaped keys that match the colors of the caged creature, as well as the collectable Easter eggs. When player takes the eggs to the hub, they are

(4)

chewed upon by the creature, and open like a capsule toy come alive. Some toys from the eggs can decorate the boxcar giving the player character a new design and feel.

By building a more complete and feature-rich product, Vectorpark can reach a larger slice of the indie game and adventure game audiences while maintaining the mood and creativity presented in the original.

Audience

Windosill2 is a casual exploratory puzzle game. While all genders and ages play casual games, the buying audience skews 30 years or older and female. Windosill’s short gameplay time fits into this audience and the 21 year or older audience’s busy schedule. The exploratory gameplay gives Windosill strong crossover appeal to former and current adventure gamers. Due to games like The Walking Dead and The Last of Us, adventure games have resurged in

popularity. Windosill fills the void in this re-emerging market. Windosill2’s biggest audience is the former adventure gamer, 30 or older female, and 21 year or older audience but it’s accessible to a broad audience. The simple game mechanics, lack of language, and tutorial allow for an audience of 8 to 21 year olds, international, or new-to-gaming.

Narrative Elements

Vacation Dreamscapes

In Windosill2, the child’s dreamscape from Windosill1 transitions into one centered around the theme of a family vacation. During a vacation, people are removed from reality in a similar way to how they are removed from reality in a dream. People purposefully seek out locations that are unlike those that they interact with in their daily live.

While a toy chest is located within a home, a vacation usually involves being outside. Often, the only four walls people on a vacation see the inside of are that of their hotel room. In Windosill2, this room serves as a hub that the player returns to in order to access levels. A hotel room is the first place people go to when beginning a vacation and it is also where people store the souvenirs. Thus, it is the perfect place to store the collectibles items that players will find throughout Windosill2.

(5)

Since people are usually out and about during vacations, the levels in Windosill2 will be based around outdoor environments. These will range from natural scenes, such as the beach, to more urban inspired scenes such as carnivals or various tourist destination spots.

Exploration with a Purpose

Windosill1 was good at setting up environments to explore. The unrelated scenes between the levels give the game a degree of unpredictability. While this lends a dream like quality to it, it also means that Windosill does not have an overall objective. The player has no motivation to move forward other than pure curiosity and enjoyment of the game. Although this is a feat within itself, there is another level of interest that Windosill1 is missing entirely. With Windosill2, players are given a purpose that explains why they are moving through all of these different levels.

Windosill2 is organized around a main hub, which is the hotel room. It is the first scene the player sees after the short tutorial level. The hotel room contains a set of elevator doors that transport the player’s cart to the various levels, provides a space to keep found collectibles, and provides a focus in the form of a creature in a cage.

The end goal of Windosill2 will be to release the creature from the cage. Keys of different shapes are collected from all the levels and placed into an unlocking mechanism. Conceptually, the creature is a stuffed animal. It presumably belongs to the player. The player is thought to be a kid who brought the stuffed animal with him/her on vacation. However, the player did not have enough room in his/her suitcase and the stuffed animal had to be packed into the parent’s suitcase. Through the lens of Windosill, the suitcase looks like a cage because it is trapping the stuffed animal inside of it.

Ending with a Bang

Since there is a purpose for going through all of these levels, there has to be a resolution. In order to increase the replay value, there are two possible endings. This also has the added benefit of making the perceived worth of the collectible items higher. If players have not found enough collectibles, then the creature runs away because there are not enough toys for it to play with. If players have found most of the collectibles, then they receive the bonus ending. The

(6)

collectibles might be knocked to the ground, where the user can pick them up and use them to interact with the creature.

Overall Game Mechanic

Windowsill 2.0 will expand on the puzzle solving and exploration through bizarre rooms that was in the first game by making the puzzles more complex and the structure of the game more fleshed out. In this version we hope to keep the audience that was excited by the artistic and psychedelic simplicity in this casual experience while reaching out to serious gamers by making the game a longer and more involved experience. Instead of just collecting the cube to escape the level the player can collect items to customize their boxcar, their hub, and will be required to collect multiple shapes to unlock a door to a next level.

Keys

The game will start at a hub room with a large cage and the cage will have holes for shapes that the player must fill to free the mystery creature inside. The player will find these shape keys in each level to pass to other levels by solving puzzles just like the cubes in the first game. In this version however there will be rooms that require multiple keys to unlock so after the player collects a key they attach to the main boxcar by small boxcars bound by a rope. When the player has collected all 12 shape keys, they can slot them into the cage and reveal the

creature and win the game.

Collectables

Throughout this journey the player can also collect Easter eggs by engaging in

interactions outside of the solution. Each level will have a sequence of interactions to solve the level, but if the player experiments and tries to interact objects together there’s a chance it will reveal a literal egg that the player can take back to the hub and reveal an object that can be used to customize the hub room or the boxcar. Objects that can customize the boxcar will be in the form of paint to color your boxcar, gizmos to decorate it, replacement parts like wheels, all of which are up to the player to choose to add. There will also be toys to decorate the hub room and will influence the ending of the game. When you free the creature he will be drawn to the toys you collected for the room, and then you can play with the creature with these toys. This side

(7)

objective of Easter egg hunting will encourage players to spend more time on levels and creatively interact with the stage.

Hints

To ensure this game is more accessible to new players and avoid discouraging players with the obscurity of the puzzles, a subtle hints system will be implemented. A hint can be activated in the stage after a certain amount of time without interacting with the next object in the causal chain. An icon in the bottom HUD will light up and when the player clicks it the object they need to interact gets a glowing border, drawing the player’s attention and progress through the puzzle.

(8)

Mood Board Description

Windosill2 takes place on a vibrant colored island that contains a wild animal trapped in a cage. The objective of the game is for the user to find different shaped keys to free the animal. For example the keys can be a circle, star, rectangle, star, triangle, etc. with all different colors. (Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.) The keyhole will be the shape of the key. The reason why the key should be colorful and the island should be vibrant is because the game is a childlike dream on a vacation.

On the island there are some attractions such as a dark carnival, vibrant waterfall, and a grey cave. In the game it will contain somewhat dark themes in levels comparing to Windosill but not too extreme; it’ll still be kid friendly and not scary. The pictures provided in the mood board shows how “dark” it should be. (The carnival and Black Brick Road) The dark theme would be muted colors. Dark exotic characters can be presented with Halloween related things such as a witch hat, a pet bat, and or a broom.

Windosill2 will contain a customizable element. The way customizability is done is by colorful Easter eggs that contain objects that act like toys. Throughout the levels the player can collect the different colored Easter eggs and use them to customize their train.

PROPOSAL FOR WINDOSILL 2.0

PROPOSAL FOR

WINDOSILL 2.0

Contents