Brainstorming
In this final project, Mari and I wanted to work with the themes of wonderland and escape room. Wonderland is defined as:
but we only wanted to work loosely off of this definition, as we knew we wanted some kind of “darker” side to the wonderland. Within our brainstorming for the wonderland setting, we looked at Alice in wonderland’s infamous door know scene found here:
We looked at this scene in particular due to the fact that Alice is indeed in a wonderland, but faces troubles and fears within it due to a fear of the unknown. In this example of a wonderland, there isn’t something inherently bad, but the main character is frightened in the uncertainty that shrouds the strange place. We knew we really wanted to try our best to incorporate this into our assignment; the idea that a wonderland inherently carries a sense of the unknown which can make it frightening, although the wonderland may not have any conventionally frightening things.
Within the idea of causing anxiety to our user within the environment, we briefly looked into the SAW horror films as an example of a (literal) escape room type situation.
This was quickly dropped, as we decided we wanted our wonderland to follow more of a “fear of the unknown” rather than a blatant horror style.
An escape room, according to wikipedia, is defined as the following:
Again we wanted to loosely interpret this, and so our idea of an escape room is meant to represent the goal of the user to look for a kind of relief within the wonderland. This fit in nicely with our idea of the fear of the unknown, as so we had a general basis to work with from there.
Concretization of the Idea
At this point we knew what we generally wanted, and so we had to pick a concrete idea to work with within our wonderland environment. We liked the idea of creating something from folklore, and after some discussion settled on Shintō Folklore from Japan. Specifically within Shintō folklore, we looked at the Yōkai. We liked the idea of focusing on Yōkai, due to the fact that they are not necessarily associated with “good or bad” and playing with the gray area they fall into.
Narrowing it down further, we really liked the myths of the Kitsune. This is a type of fox yōkai, or spirit, that has various abilities such as being able to can shape-shift into a human. According to Shintō folklore, the Kitsune have multiple tails and can reach up to 9 tails. The tails represent their age, power, and intelligence, so a Kitsune with 9 tails carries the implication of being of the highest caliber in these regards, and is a very rare sight.
There are also various types of Kitsune. The two that are key figures in our game are the following:
- Nogitsune: Nogitsune are wild foxes that do not serve as messengers for the gods. They are known to torment, trick, and even possess humans, sometimes using their shape-shifting powers to do so.
- Zenko: Also known as benevolent foxes, the zenko are mostly associated with the deity of rice, Inari. These kitsune are white in color and are also known to be able to ward off evil, also at times serving as guardian spirits. They also help protect humans against nogitsune.
In Japan, there are many Kitsune statues found within Shintō shrines. Therefore, we decided to use a Shintō shrine as our setting for the project.
Along with making the environment be a shrine, we were also influenced aesthetically by the Nintendo game Muramasa Demon Blade . The game is 2D, but we really liked some of the visual cues used in the game in order to articulate more specifics in the setting.
Storyline so far . . .
And so finally for our story, we decided that we would like it to be based off of the zenko and the nogitsune foxes. The current layout of the narrative would be as follows.
- The user finds themselves alone in the middle of a shrine/cemetery during sunset
- As the sun sets, the environment starts looking more hostile/surreal (haze, colored skybox, creepy background sound, based off of some of the aesthetics shown above in Muramasa Demon Blade)
- Once the environment is fully “surreal”, two foxes appear in front of the user. Both have 9 tails and look similar. (one is an Inari fox, the other is a wild fox that has disguised its appearance)
- The user is prompted to “make a choice” and pick one of the two foxes.
- If the user chooses the Inari fox, or the “good” fox, the environment goes back to how it normally was (we are still considering different options on how to make this outcome more interesting/exciting)
- If the user chooses the wild (bad) fox (which is disguised as a good Kitsune), they stay trapped in the surreal space.
Finally, a helpful summary of some of the feedback we heard in class:
- Ending: does it end due to a user’s option? Or just naturally? Or does the user just take the Google Cardboard off ?
- How do we hint at the choice that the user has to make? → we could possibly have the kitsunes be on different path and then the user chooses between them → does this mean that they move somewhere else after following the path? The user appears in another part of the shrine?
- How do we create a satisfying ending for the good fox? (right now the “bad ending” seems more interesting)