Back to the Past?

For my game, I was inspired by the movie series Back to the Future. In the game the main character, Marty, learns from his crazy uncle that they have left a few items in the past from their time travel adventure. His Uncle sets him off on a mission to travel back in time and grab those items before they mess up the past forever. In order to successfully tell this story, I really had to focus on environmental storytelling. I wanted to make sure that even without the dialog, the player could figure out what world they are in with just the details of the scene alone. 

Room #1 : The beginning scene. Starts in the living room of Marty’s house. 

1b : This is the garage that’s connected to the house.  It is also where the crazy uncle’s laboratory is. 

Room #2: This is when your time time traveling begins. Marty is transported to Ancient Egypt with Pharo and the building of the Pyramids. Marty will have to go and talk with a character named Pharo which he tells him where the item is. 

Room #3 : Marty is then transported to Medieval times with castles and nights.  There he will find the second missing item. 

Room #4: The next room is a diner from the 1950s.  Marty will go up and talk with one of the lady’s who works in the diner to get a clue of what time period he traveled too. There he will pick up the third item. 

Room #5 : The final room is set on a boat dock dating back to pirates.  Marty runs into one of the pirates who tells him they’re going to make him walk the plank but decides to cut him some slack if he swims out to sea and grabs his spear. After the interaction with the pirate, Marty will continue on looking for the fourth and final item. From there, Marty is transported back to the garage with his crazy uncle to give him all four items. Once he does so, the crazy uncle will tell Marty that he has completed the mission. 

Once Marty accomplishes collecting all the items and give them to his uncle, the game ends. In Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud page 32 references shapes and how the human brain can compare shapes to faces. In my game, I used stick figures as all my characters in order to keep the realistic narrative.  I felt it would be more compelling and easier to find when searching for a specific sprite. McCloud also refers to timing and time frames, he likes to explain how word bubbles should be arranged in order for the reader to read something first or not (pg. 96). In my game, I used timing when the avatar transitions into different rooms aka “worlds”. I created the game to when Marty time travels to a different era he will be forced to go up to a sprite and interact with it to receive more information. 

 McCloud also talks about abstraction, and how stripping the detail out of a character does not change who the character is; however, it can make the scene less intense (pg. 30). In my game, I tried keeping the characters as abstract as possible, by making the characters and items to be picked up like actual humans and objects that one would see in real life. McCloud refers to transitions between panels, he says “when “Bleeds” are used – When a panel runs off the edge of the page – this effect is compounded.” When developing my game, I used  special effects to indicate the transitions between real time and the past.