Worlds and Characters

Grackles. Okay cool, I got the bird thing out of the way for this post.

Wait no, I do have grackle things to post. Here's a video where I do the near-daily catch game with these three male grackles.

And here's another where a mother feeds her rather noisy offspring. Watch your volume, they get loud up close like this. (I'm a derp for not dropping the volume on the video.)

DT3 World and Characters
I may have mentioned it before, but I prefer character driven stories the most. And really, stories that have well developed characters over well developed worlds. I've been thinking more about this as I start to think on what I'm going to do next. (And I finally know what I'm making after DT3.) Distorted Travesty is weird to me in that sense because it develops the world more than it does the characters. Admittedly the third game does a lot more in developing its characters than DT1 did, with a bit more focus on Claire than the others, at least in my opinion. But I still find that it favors world building over characters. Especially now that the world is already set up prior to the game starting. I find it weird since I generally make what I enjoy most and I did the opposite when it comes to story telling.

When it comes to making games, I always start with a gameplay idea in mind and then think about some of its functions and nuances and how they can be used in possible game scenarios. From there, I write characters to fit that gameplay, which then leads to building the world around those characters. DT did things different, where it was: Gameplay -> World -> Characters. Thinking back on when I started the first DT game, a lot of things were simply to justify running through worlds of various video games and my odd take on them. I just needed characters to fill that world.

That's probably why I enjoyed the writing itself more in DT3 than in DT1. While there is a lot of world building, which I think is natural at the state of things when DT3 starts. I wrote DT3 with the characters in mind first. Such as giving the protagonists a bit more personality and SOME backstory. More importantly (well for me anyway) were the antagonists and what they mean in the story.

Future Things
I won't say exactly what I'm working on next, however the thing I've always really liked are asymmetrical multiplayer gameplay. Meaning, multiplayer games where each player has a different control scheme or play style. More specifically, taking those examples and each player is also working towards the same goal. I've played around with this sort of thing here and there, even over the course of developing DT3.

About a year ago, I linked a very rough example of something I made about 5 years ago. (and it hasn't gotten any love since then either) I linked a Breakout variation (which I will also link again) where all four sides are open and there is a paddle on each side. Up/Down controls the left/right paddles, and Left/Right controls the upper/lower paddles. There is also other things occurring that require the mouse to be used along with this. The idea being one player takes control of the paddles and the other uses the mouse. Eventually there was going to be something else the mouse user had to watch and react to as well, but you know, the game didn't get much love. It IS beatable. (though nothing happens when you clear the board) A friend of mine who helped me decide on power ups and mechanics beat it along with me.

I've been thinking a lot about really going into this sort of thing as it has always been an interest of mine. The idea of differing play-styles working toward a single goal specifically is what I have in mind.