These are some notes that I put down during my initial “conception” stage, trying to think about things like what to call the main character, how I’d like to open the game, and world-building, where I wanted the main parts of the game to be, etc. Just a little brainstorming here and there. This is where I decided on Eve being the name of the character as a reference to Adam and Eve (the original woman).
Utilizing the tips that I learned from this LinkedIn game design course I decided to do a little more thinking about how I would like the game to play and what kind of game mechanics I could add.
The biggest thing I got from the course was essentially building your game around its “core”. It really made me think, about the core of my game. I settled on the word empathy. The goal of this experience, I guess, is to get people to understand the feelings of being trapped, afraid, and not having agency. Even though Eve is technically not a real person, they should still have empathy for the situation he is in and women who experience abuse in general. Maybe even think about what makes us human in the first place.
In any case, once the core was established I began to think about how to create the feelings I wanted through potential gameplay mechanics.
There was also the idea of the core loop which is like a series of actions to keep the players engaged in the game. This was a bit trickier for me to think about and to be fair in the course they did give examples of games that didn’t technically have a core loop or just had one general one so for example Minecraft = creativity. Writing a core statement out was also super helpful for me mentally as it really made me think about how to actually express this goal.
I also remembered a game I really love that is also a huge source of inspiration for the updated gameplay mechanics. It takes the trope of the captured princess and hero who saves her and rather than playing the hero, as per usual we are actually put in the princess’s shoes. It’s deeply harrowing.