#Week 1

The one where I tried to shape ideas and not to lose my mind.

Welcome to week number one of my final year project MIND PRISON for my BA in Computer Games Design. You will find weekly progress on my project development in this blog so feel free to follow and give constructive feedback on the game. 

I apologize in advance for a longer first post as it will explain the main ideas for this project and won't have much to show just yet. 

IDEA GENERATION 

Mind Prison is a tabletop/mobile hybrid. The goal is to develop a board game that is supported by a companion app, not the other way around. 

For my mechanics I chose two keywords to focus on: 

Perspective and Heterotopia.

With those two words in mind I came up with the idea of combining two worlds. The real world (board game) and the dream world (application). Within the application the player will play as two characters with different abilities in order to solve environmental puzzles.

GAME OVERVIEW

The players find themselves in a dangerous location as their friend was trapped in sleep paralysis; however, the reality and dream world seem to be connected somehow. Whatever the friend dreams or hallucinates becomes reality and the goal of the players is to find the sleeping friend bringing the requested items and wake him up.The players will have to cooperate in order to complete the goal. Together they will explore their location, solve puzzles and fight monsters that breached out from the dream world and became reality.

MECHANICS

I have gathered several inspirations from other board games for my core mechanics. 

Although some might change over the course of development I have listed some mechanics that I would like to implement:

• Have action cards with a pre-set combination of actions that can never be repeated in the next turn. This adds a little bit more of a strategy sense to the game as the player has to consider which actions to choose and what he will do in the next turn;
  
  
• Characters have different traits and a special skill,they will also include some small background stories;
  
  
• Actions that can be played: Move, Search, Sleep(get into the dream world), Explore new area, trade, fight, avoid monster;
  
  
• There will be one mission for my module, the goal of this mission is to find the friend, bring the right items and wake the friend up in x hours (1h = 1 completed players phase), if they fail to complete this in the limited hours they will lose the game;
  
  
• In order to guide the players through the narrative there will be a story deck that they will uncover as they play through the mission; 

For the application I have found some inspiration in Inside, Lemony Snicket (Xbox version), Thomas was alone and ibb and obb. Most of those games have two or more characters that have to cooperate in order to solve environmental puzzles, which is exactly what I would like to do for the application. 

The biggest inspiration is Lemony Snicket as I would also like to have a 3D space that the gamer explores. 

One of the two characters that are playable in the application is the friend that is asleep. This way the players get a way to contact the friend and get hints about his location or items to help wake him. 

NEXT STEPS
So now that you know what direction I am going with my final year project I will focus on my next steps: 

• Start Mission Design;
• Get the first board game prototype;
• Create a navigational map for the application;
• Puzzle design ideas for the application;

Any comments and feedback a very welcome :)