AGI Studio 2 - Folio 2

Abstract

Games often focus on the journey of a central character, with perspective shifts that are limited by constraints. For instance, Super Mario Odyssey (Nintendo, 2017) and Parasite (Nitrome, 2009) allow players to shift control to other entities within the game, but are often limited to the puzzle at hand. This puts a damper on more creative uses of such abilities while gatekeeping certain user interaction. In response to this, I created a demo level for an explorative platformer game called Gloop. While the player initially begins as a parasitic mass, to effectively traverse the environment, one must infect and control other creatures. The player can freely change their environment and use the abilities of the creature to infect or synergize with other creatures to reach their goal. In this demo the soft objective is to reach the highest and lowest points in the map, thus leaving it to the user to choose their own characters, abilities and paths to achieve this. I believe that the emergent mechanics arising from this experience could be invaluable for designing decentralized, unstructured games.

Trailer Video - Gloop Trailer - YouTube