Project 2 Proposal

For my second project in this class, I propose to create an interactive piece.  This will be a videogame focused on giving the player a sense of exploration and of leaving the ordinary.

In my post about Superbrother's Sword and Sworcery EP, I talked about the idea of center/periphery in Legends.  One of the reasons I am fascinated by this idea is that the center/periphery structure is similar to the structure of certain types of games, specifically 3rd Person Adventure games (i.e. The Legend of Zelda) and Role Playing games (i.e. the Final Fantasy games).  Quite often these games begin the main character's home, and frequently in the character's bedroom.  Some event or another prompts the character to leave home and venture in to the world.  The farther from home the main character travels, the more he or she encounters strange and dangerous creatures.  At the end of the game the main character usually returns home and resolve whatever prompted his or her journey.  I would like to explore this journey into the unfamiliar in videogames.

I found inspiration for this project from Neil Gaiman's poem Instructions.  The poem lays out what to do if you find yourself in a fairy tale.  It mentions several ways to travel away from the familiar world to another world, and in the end, you can return home only to find it has changed.  I plan on setting my project in a space that is familiar to me: the backyard in my childhood home.  My backyard had a pathway through some overgrowth.  There was just enough room for a child to climb under it, and it lead to my friend's house.  Our parents did not like us to go through this path, in large part because it meant cutting through a neighbor's garden.  But we did travel through it quite often, and it always felt like a daring journey.  In my videogame I would like this path to lead to a strange place with its own odd rules.

I am also inspired by the First Person Puzzle game Antichamber.  This game similarly has a safe beginning space, from which the player ventures into a bizarre world governed by unique logic.  Throughout the game the player frequently returns to the beginning space, which is changed slightly by what the player uncovered in the main part of the game.