The Concept
The Elevator Pitch
A Waltz Through Time is a third-person detective platformer where you must find a missing person by time-traveling to a now-abandoned Victorian property. Use time-related objects at the grounds to cross over to the estate grounds as they were in their heyday, or to return to the present. Explore the estate in the past and the present to discover more about what transpired. Solve puzzles or overcome obstacles in one time period to open new paths in another, giving you more opportunities to hunt for answers as you inch closer to uncovering the mystery.
Block-out Video
The Assignment
For this university project, we were given a creative brief that had a list of constraints that we had to use to come up with a game concept. We had about seven weeks to brainstorm, come up ideas, research and test them, and eventually pitch our concept. The focus of this project was to practice brainstorming, ideation, and concepting.
My Workflow
1 Research
The focus of my research was the setting and location of our game. One of the ideas we had for the location of our game was a Victorian mansion, but one of the constraints of our brief was ‘outside environments‘. I then decided to look into Victorian gardens to see if these could facilitate puzzling and platforming (as these were two other constraints of our project). Below are some excerpts from the research, the entire document can be found here.
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2 Sketching
After researching Victorian estates and gardens I had several ideas for locations we could pick for our game. In order to get these ideas across to the team, I made these sketches (which I later added to the proposal slides in my research).
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3 Block-outs
After making several sketches I proceeded to block them out so my teammates could walk and play through my ideas (block-outs were made in UE4). The goal of these block-outs was to showcase the different locations we could use and what type of gameplay those locations could facilitate.
The images below are one-pagers I made for each block-out (using the concept art of a notebook that Stefanie made as a background). The one-pagers show the sketch of the idea, and GIFs of the most important locations/gameplay moments (emphasizing the core gameplay loop (Explore –> Discover –> Overcome/Solve)).
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Notebook concept art by Stefanie Arndorfer
The Team
Design
Lisa van Beurden – Level
Luuk Siebrichs – System
Marloes de Graaf – Level
Xan Hisam – System
Programming
Reika Ikemizu – Gameplay
Tristan Poiesz – Gameplay
Visual Arts
Alicia Heredia – Procedural
Bernhard Altena – Animation
Piia Brusi – Character
Stefanie Arndorfer – Environment
Tiffany Jansen – Environment