Today’s blogpost is by Stian. And the result is what happens when you ask a designer to write a blogpost.
Ooh. Great… When the conversation topic at the morning meeting is the Blog, and you mention, as a joke mind you, that it could be about checkpoints for some reason: Keep quiet. That is my advice to you, unless you happen to want to write a blog post about checkpoints.
Which strangely enough I do. No regrets! Here we go:
Today we’re going to tell you a bit about the lights in Shadow Puppeteer. One of the central gameplay elements in the game that sets it apart from other titles is the variation in light types.
How the logic of the Shadow works, is that he is always drawn to light. He has at all times one primary light source which has a gravitational pull on him. If he falls into the light he dies, but as long as he has shadows to walk on he’s fine.
We wanted to use this to create a unique form of play with «source change». Source change is when the shadow’s gravitational pull moves from one light source to another.
Today’s topic is about the few but iconic adversaries you’ll encounter in the game, besider the Puppeteer himself.
When we first came up with the concept for Shadow Puppeteer, and the play with light and live shadows we decided that we wanted antagonists that were shadow monsters. We wanted these to be warped creatures based off of real animals that you had to trick rather than fight.
Today we’ll write about the design process for the main villain: The Shadow Puppeteer!
Compared to the development of the Boy where the focus lay primarily on the physical aspects, the development of the Puppeteer was much more psychological.
When creating a villain you have to decide what makes him or her a villain and what «brand» of evil that is. With the Puppeteer we had to consider this: Is he aware of his actions and the consequences? Is he dumb? Is he intelligent?
Today’s post will take you through the design process for the boy, from the first sketches in 2010. to the final, refined look.
The very first concept of the boy was presented for the Dare to be Digital contest to show the idea behind the game. It was team member, Torgeir, that designed the look and feel of the early style for the game. Torgeir is no longer an employee in Sarepta studio, but he will always live on in our hearts (and in the game, as several other members of the team has pointed out the resemblence between the two). But he didn’t start out like that.