Our game started on this page with the words “get” and “belong”. After kicking around the words for a while, we decided we wanted to access the emotion of belonging to a group — originally using owls as the PC that was going to try to belong.

We thought, “How can one belong to a group? What means can you utilize to get a group to accept you?”  Disguises were the answer. Originally we were thinking you can disguise yourself visually, with smell, sound, a potion, or you could distract the group so they don’t notice you’re not one of them. If we had more time we might employ more of these distractions, but for this simple prototype game we went with strictly visual disguise.

In about the second week we decided that a fish would be a good PC.  Fish are very basic. They are visually interesting, but mentally simplistic. Fish (of the schooling variety) depend on belonging to a group for their very existence. They have to be doing exactly what the fish next to them is doing at all times, or they will get eaten.  We made up some fish models, and a long stream for them to swim along. The PC fish has to go through a school and pick the correct disguise quickly or it’s all over.

We talked a while about what the point was. What did you have to “get” in the end?  We thought about making an empty promise.  Cake, or something. How much did “belonging” really benefit you, the player?

Aesthetics was a fairly easy discussion. Caleb and I have similar tastes. We decided to make the fish kind of cutout-esque with realistic textures. At first we were thinking of making the game occur in deep sea, and having dark surroundings and glowing fishes. But then we realized it would be interesting to have a fixed camera in perspective view, with a stream and trees momentarily blocking your view as they pass by.  We also looked at videos of cuttlefish for inspiration on how to change the camouflage… which again fell by the wayside due to time constraints.