BA4: Game Design Document #29

Psyche & Fear Level

A unique mechanic of Distorted Delirium is that when in the inventory screen, the player will be able to view a level /gauge which indicates to them just how badly damaged Lianna's psyche is at that stage in the game. A simple way to describe it is  by saying that this level visually shows the mental stability of Lianna.

Previously in my blog I posted a draft copy of the mechanics, in this post was a section on the psyche gauge and how it works so I'm not going to repeat  myself here unless necessary. 

Designing the Psyche Level Gauge

My group were a little confused at first when I was trying to explain and describe how the psyche and fear works in the game, after reading my mechanics section they understand. However, in this time I was already designing possible ways for the player to view Lianna’s psyche in game. 

I knew that I wanted it to be a physical “level” where the player could clearly see how mad they are. As you can see in the inventory designs I posted previously my thought process was to have some sort of “bar” which would “fill up” as Lianna’s psyche raised. 

 

The  next factor you can see in the early inventory designs is that I wanted to have Lianna’s fear represented on screen as an actual word. (Fear, it’s stages and words have been described earlier in the blog, please refer to ingame mechanics). 

 

So, with those 2 basic concepts in mind, a bar meter for psyche and text based fear description, here are my concept designs. 

 

#1 - Initial Idea

The first thought that popped into my head was to have the fear word pop up in some sort of “magic 8 ball” style in a camera lens. I thought this linked the fear nicely to Lianna as a character. I then also thought about having the “bar” for the psyche wrapped around the lens which would “fill up” around it as Lianna’s psyche got worse.

 

#2 - Quick Concept Mock Up

 

#3 - Brain Practice

After this concept mock up, I had another idea. As psyche is directly related to the brain, I figured having a brain as a part of the design was crucial. So, this is when I decided to do a quick study of a brain. 

  

#4 - Applying This to my Design

I then looked into how I could incorporate my brain study into my previous design. I decided that Lianna’s lens reference could emerge out from the centre of the brain to indicate the fear by text and then the brain could form the outer edges of the “bar”.

#5 - Mock Up Concept

  

#6 - Adding Colour

Thinking I loved this solid concept, I put it into Photoshop and added colour and textures. I added coloured highlights at the edges of the “brain” to indicate how the player would visually see their psyche getting worse. The colours would ascent from green, mild psyche damage, to red, extreme psyche damage. The fear word would change in accordance to the colour highlighted around the brain. 

  

#7 - Pushing the Concept Further

I showed this to my team who said they thought it was clever, however I think we all agreed it wasn’t strong enough as a design. So, I went back to the drawing board. Sticking more with my original “bar filling up” idea, I went back to basics and designed the psyche so that there could be a bar which would fill up the worse the psyche got. I felt this gave a clearer indication to the player of how Lianna’s psyche damage was.

Still keeping the lens and brain idea I decided to try and incorporate them both into one design focused around a bar meter. I was looking at my brain study and saw the small part which elongated itself down from the brain. I think this is where the spinal cord joins up with the brain and cleverly saw an awesome link. I pulled this section down and if formed the “bar” which I sought after or the design, but it also kept in with the brain theme. The awesome link was that it could be seen as the spinal cord between her brain and body (the camera lens). The spinal cord is crucially important to our body and if broken can do us great amounts of damage, I thought this linked in well because the bar was the representation of how badly Lianna’s psyche was. 

 #8 - Final Design

So, as you can see there is now a clear “meter” bar which can be filled up. It is split into 5 sections as these 5 sections indicate when Lianna’s fear will change. Fear is then represented through text appearing in the lens situated at the bottom of the bar.