Mike and I are starting work on Life Raft proper.

With Gray pretty much wrapped up [barring some boring business stuff] Mike and I are now setting our sites on a bit of a pet-project we’ve been kicking around. It’s called Life Raft and it’s basically a side-scrolling platformer loosely inspired by Air Buccaneers. Though I decided to take the story/characters in a much different direction than the quasi steam-punk air balloon combat twixt gentlemen of the UT2004 mod [as amazingly awesome as it is].

Whenever we have an idea for a game, it usually starts out as a gameplay skeleton. “Hey wouldn’t it be cool to push hail up in the air to make it grow bigger and have it crash down onto buildings for points?” or “Have you played death worm? We should see if we could expand on it.” With Life Raft it started as “Hey, we want to make that [redacted] game eventually, maybe we should start with a simple platformer to get some of the tech worked out. Air buccaneers is awesome, let’s do something with grappling hooks and moving vehicles/platforms and etc.” The next phase of development for me is to figure out what the plot/look and all that stuff is going to actually be about. The opposite would be true if we were to come up with themes first and then try and wrap gameplay around them. I don’t think that’s a good way to go, but that’s another post entirely. Besides, working within restraints can breed incredible ideas. So… Life Raft. To begin this process I simply list out the criteria for ideation.

I start by setting up places moving vehicles would work within all the criteria. For this to work, the player needs to have a wide range of motion as well as the constant threat of death below them.

• Lava, Water [shark infested], High Sky, Acid, Event Horizon, etc…

I pick one from that list. Let’s go with water [because that's what I picked]. From water I went into further details with what the vehicles could be.

• Helicopter, Plane, Birds, Dolphins, Hoverboats, etc.

From this list nothing really interested me, so I started thinking about what if “falling” into the sky was the big risk. Like fish that would rise up into the sky [because they were too buoyant] and they’d constantly be fighting against that buoyancy. That struck a cord but I wanted the character to be human, simply because it’s been awhile since I’ve created a human player character for a game. The underwater thing wasn’t working out, but I wanted to preserve the interesting parts of the idea that sea creatures were floating to the surface of the sea. So that’s basically the A to B of Life Raft’s IP. Here’s the gist of it.

Many eons ago the world was flooded and the surviving humans found the rare patches of land to live on. Times were hard but they persevered. Later, strange creatures arose from the depths of the sea, evolved from consuming strange deposits at the planet’s core, they were now made too buoyant for survival underwater. All the people saw this as the species has overgrown in numbers, most of the sea’s surface was covered. Many used their carcasses as a resource to expand their tiny islands, another considered the bounty a blessing and feasted, feeding generations of their people. Many years passed and those that began building with the remains of the beasts prospered and grew large foundations. Back at the isolated island their community remained small, but faithful. Not many years ago, the villagers found a living beast floating in the sky willingly, perhaps fresh from the sea floor. It seemed to feel at home in their island sanctuary and soon found an attachment with a little girl with which befriended. The villagers found it strangely mystical and celebrated their companionship as the strange beast, now named Ekiuna [temporary?], often protected the little girl as she grew older. Now a young leader of her village, she is hailed as the finest hunter they have ever seen. With an innate knowledge of her environment and the agility of Ekiuna, they were a team unmatched. All the while, the village elders spoke in dark corners of the peculiar nature of this new arrival. Now, today, those suspicions are vindicated, an unlikely messenger brings ill-news from the open seas…

Ok, yea. So that’s what I’m thinking. As for the art style, that’s completely independent of the theme for this go around. I started out by painting some pixel art to get the ball rolling and I really liked how it turned out. I tried a few other things, but sometimes it’s best to use your heart and not your head. I guess if my heart isn’t telling me anything about which direction to go, I defer back to my head which is always useful. Hence the whole way I ended up with this Life Raft idea. Though I will admit that the original idea was much more generalized. Something to the tune of “Jellyfish from the sea floor rise up to the surface with gas in them and people run around on them.” Once I had that initial spark I took it further and really sunk my heart into the story, background and characters.

Oh and for this image, I have a bit of a tutorial going that I have in the works. I started writing it yesterday but it’s turning out to be too long so I’ll need to figure out how [or if] to boil it down.