This unit is the year 2 units 9, 10 and 12 combined into 1 big unit which focuses mainly on environmental storytelling. We were given 1 word that applies to everybody and 2 words that were given to us personally at random.

Research

3 Keywords

Makeshift | meɪkʃɪft
Adjective/Noun
    I. Makeshift things are temporary and usually of poor quality, 
       but they are used because there is nothing better  available.
    "The cardboard boxes are makeshift shelters of the homeless."
Synonyms: Crude, Temporary, Provisional, Make-do
- Collins English Dictionary - Makeshift

Abandoned | əbændənd
Adjective
    I. An abandoned place or building is no longer used or occupied.
    "All that digging had left a network of abandoned mines and tunnels."
Synonyms: Derelict, Empty, Deserted
- Collins English Dictionary - Abandoned

Chaos | keɪɒs
Uncountable Noun
    I. Chaos is a state of complete disorder and confusion.
    "It is impossible to establish democracy amid economic chaos."
Synonyms: Disorder, Confusion, Mayhem
- Collins English Dictionary - Chaos

Inspiration Boards

Makeshift

Games and Media: Graffiti Culture, Splatoon Raiders, Arc Raiders, Gachiakuta, Hidden King (Deadlock), Dune Awakening, New York City

Makeshift is a really interesting aesthetic, it showcases the sheer human ingenuiety in being able to keep something functional with as little resources possible as their availability is low. Chicago and New York City are both famous real life landmarks which, in certain areas, showcase heavy makeshift ideas and influences, lines being held up by rusted pipes, fire escapes leading down to backalleys which themselves would be full of junk.
Makeshift can also just mean for something to be created as a temporary measurement or for something to be made very crude. The small house above made of small corregated metal sheets and toilet paper tubes showcases this as its core level – using everyday items / things that people may have on a daily basis in abundance to create buildings that would hold up until more sturdier materials can be utilised.

Gachiakuta is a 2022 anime, revolving around the idea of living in a world full of trash, garbage and junk. Big piles of it are scattered over the lands and a lot of the aesthetics of both the anime as well as the fashion that is shown in the character design is all interlinked, the characters have patches, makeshift gas masks and weapons that are well-worn, an amazing showcase of Makeshift.

Deadlock(2024) is an 3D, Movement Shooter MOBA with eldritch entities known as the “Patrons”; The Hidden King and The Archmother, The Archmother represents herself very similar to the Statue of Liberty that is present in New York City, New York, USA, meanwhile The Hidden King has more of a grunge, anarchistic and makeshift aesthetic, their main lair being a weaponry factory that has been taken over and remodelled, The Hidden King takes very heavy inspiration from The King in Yellow as well.

Poland as a country has a wide culture of trying to make-do with provisional inventions that initially are there for a fix that is meant to recieve a proper fix after some time, yet ends up being the fix for the next 20 years. This aspect of the culture is called “Kombinować” [Kom-bee-noh-va-ch] – a word that doesn’t have a true english translation however it can roughly mean “To find a clever or sly way to cheat the system” or “To create fixes by your own hand, it may not look pretty but it is resourceful”. During the times of the Soviet Union and when Poland was under communist rule, resources were low but the people had to fix anything that was broken in a very crude way in order to spend as least amount of money so that the government wouldn’t get as many taxes, which has now become a true core of culture in poland taught by the older generations to the younger ones and has been passed down.

Abandoned

Games and Media: Chernobyl, Stray(2022), Urban Exploration Culture, Tom Clancy’s Divison 1+2 (2016)(2019),

Abandoned architecture and media have always been an interest of mine, urbexxing (urban exploring) and just visiting the parts of civiliations and cities that the public and the governing bodies have chosen to forget about and leave neglected btu standing. Urban exploring is a sign of freedom and an activity that lets people do whatever they would like to do and just visiting that used to have so much history and used to get very frequent use, thrown away by society.

Chaos

Games and Media

Planning

At first, I wanted to attemt to come upwith a plan earlier, trying a certain playstyle for the player and different ideas to explore in terms of exploration and gameplay as well as being able to tell a story through the environment. I have explored 3 different ideas before I found a good grasp of an idea that I would want to try.

Idea 1: The Everpit

The player is inside of a linear town, very makeshift in design taking inspirations from Stray and Splatoon, the player would explore the town and find small entry points that would look out of place to gather interest – the player would enter something called a “Chaos Zone”, a small reality that would have a random effect applied on it, the place is upside down, coloured an off-colour or any other effect. The player would end up finding a material at the end of these zones and eventually be able to create a key that would unlock a giant door that the player would have been introduced to at the beginning of the game. This was an idea for the environment itself rather than the story that I wanted it to tell.

After talking about it with my peers, I realised that this idea wasn’t good because it had a lot of flaws and holes in its idea and I couldn’t come up with answers to basic questions like:

• Why is the player here?
• How does the player know that they’re supposed to explore?
• What tells the player to go to these areas?
• What story does this actually tell?

After speaking about it with my friends about how i can improve my idea and they suggested that I may try to incorporate some of my personal philosophies or try to think of a story first. With this, there was some ideas that I had liked such as the “Chaos Zones” or the idea that there was a supernatural power that created some areas that were had random effects added onto them, however I decided to scrap the “Everpit” idea.

Idea 2: City Builder

The second idea that I had tried to come up with to be able to tell a story through the environment was for a City Builder game, taking inspirations from games like Ixion and Frostpunk where the player would build a city and have to order around the people to explore abandoned buildings and giant spheres that are “Chaos Zones” which would pose dangers but hide important resources, if the party that was sent out to the Chaos Zone would succeed the zone would decrease in size and certain resources could be unlocked.

Personally, I really liked this idea, the idea that as the player makes their choices, their actions would have consequences and in the end it would implement the idea of Memento Mori; Remember your mortality where the civilisation would fall anyway.

Unfortunately the city builder idea disregarded the “Limited Text” and “Explorable Environment” part of the brief so I decided to potentially shelf the idea but not use it for now.

Idea 3: Ouroboros

This idea had the initial idea of “How happy can sisyphus be? Doing the same thing everyday, would people find comfort within repetition or find it their worst nightmare?” Where the player is stuck in a constant loop where whenever they die, they have to retry the whole level as different levels change and become distorted