Upon examining my own work, I noticed a few things;
- I love blending day-to-day life with the paranormal, for both comedy and horror
- Many of my games start with a simple task, that takes a long time to complete due to bizarre (or horrific) complications.
- Many of my projects are rather... still. Even though they're all interactive.
For this semester, I'd like to further investigate how movement can be used to Complicate the Simple - both through animation, storytelling, and the unique ways in which games move.
(I've been working on a visual novel in my free time, which is a genre that typically does not leave much room for animation. While I don't want to commit to any particular project idea just yet, I'd be very interested in seeing how I could make the format less static.
...And not just by adding in animated portraits. UI, lighting/particles, background elements, and screen transitions are all things that could be animated in interesting ways too.)
Inspiration:
(Most of these things contain movement that's very difficult to convey via static screenshots, so check out videos of them if you can!)
1. Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness (Episodes One & Two) (Hothead Games, 2008)
"Well I was gonna rake my lawn this morning, but then a giant robot had to crush my house."
The majority of the game takes place in a zoomed out, third-person perspective with few unique animations. As such, key moments and jokes are emphasised with 2d, animated comics. Panels slide in and out of frame as necessary, with said panels each containing a short animated scene. ...Honestly, half the jokes in the game only work because they use that type of cutscene.
2. Gravity Falls (Disney, 2012-2016)
A cartoon about a pair of twins stumbling upon paranormal conspiracies while on vacation at their great-uncle's house.
Simple summer activities (karaoke, shopping, trick-or-treating) become incredibly complex once paranormal threats (zombies, ghosts, cryptids) make themselves known, with lighting and staging used to emphasise the blend of strange and mundane. Several episodes change the art style to further highlight the weirdness; claymation, puppetry, anime, you name it.
3. Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall, 2017)
A college student returns home and tries to reconnect with family and friends. Unfortunately for her, people are going missing around town - and there's something in the woods.
Minimalist art style. Characters rarely emote beyond waving their arms, but when they do it's usually because a situation is really effecting them. Ditto, for when the dialog font is displayed differently.
How the player moves through the space also reflects the characters mood. When things are calm, the player can enthusiastically jog around town and bounce along power lines. When the protagonist attends a very awkward dinner party, the player is restricted to walking. After a brush with death leaves everyone feeling exhausted, the player can only limp.
Also uses unique movement controls for key moments; poking a severed arm with a stick is stiff and awkward, shoplifting a churro is slow and precise.
4. Rhythm Heaven Megamix (Nintendo, 2015)
Perform simple tasks by tapping in time to the beat. Characters move differently depending on how on-time the player is. Some games get progressively weirder the more a player messes up; the Ringside wrestler nearly punches out the interviewer while flexing, the Astronaut mistranslates and screams nonsense into a microphone.
5. Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent (Telltale Games, 2010)
A mix of 3D environments and 2D characters blend together to create a comic book-y artstyle. Characters have limited animation cycles in the overworld, however a change in camera angle or framerate is often used to create tension before a key moment. Also, sometimes the game has NPCs interrupt puzzles and it's fucking terrifying.
(Grickle, the lead animator, tends to use stillness a lot in his own independent animations to create tension. I'm isolating Puzzle Agent for this in particular because he applies similar principles of stillness/interruption in an interactive environment, to bizarre effect.)
6. Necrobarista (Route 59, TBA)
A completely 3D visual novel. Rather than using 2D sprites and pre-drawn backgrounds for scenes as is typical for the genre, posing, camerawork and lighting are laid out for every line of dialog. Hell, even the text changes position to fit with the scene. A unique visual twist on an old format.
(Probably not something I can replicate, given I'm a 2D artist, but it's proof that VN text doesn't have to be contained in one part of the screen.)
7. Gunpoint (Tom Francis, 2013)
The conversations in this game aren't animated at all, but the story is worth bringing up because of how comedically messy things get. You get accused of a crime you didn't commit. One character helps you delete evidence that would incriminate you. Then another character hires you to investigate the person who deleted the evidence of the crime, believing them to be the culprit... and so on and so forth.
While there's no animation in these scenes, there is a sort of "movement" in how the text boxes show up. Most of the time you can respond to characters as they talk. Other times they'll bombard you with messages, or forcefully disconnect halfway through a conversation. Useful to convey info about a character's personality or mood without having them state it upfront.
8. Roundabout (No Goblin, 2014)
You're a limousine driver who can only ever drive in circles. ...Yep. At Roundabout's core is a relatively simple love story narrative, which is made all the weirder by the mechanics and presentation. A real mixed media game: 2d, 60's aesthetic for its menus. Colourful, 3D overworld. FMV segments with real actors for key story beats. Said FMV segments contain intentionally cheesy acting, obvious stock footage and greenscreen, and also a plastic skeleton.
Sometimes I forget that photos are a viable choice for graphics, too. Sandwiching it in between illustrations definitely makes things weirder...
9. Tangle Tower (SFB Games, 2019)
A murder mystery game where interrogation is done via 2D visual novel segments. Characters have incredibly fluid animation and gestures to fit with the dialog and voice acting. Portraits also often make use of the space they're in; for example, Flora's hair whooshes over her dialog boxes.
10. Doki Doki Literature Club! (Team Salvato, 2017)
A horror visual novel masquerading as a dating sim. The game's few animated moments come in the form of unsettling "glitches"; intentionally subverting or breaking the normal UI and graphic choices in order to highlight the horror. Some sequences use one-off character portraits or fully animated gestures, in order to really drive home the horror of a scene.
(...Honestly, it's pretty cheesy. But I do like the idea of messing with the UI.)
