Goodbye Game, What now?

OK so talking with Doug today its been decided that the game play aspect of my project is to be scrapped. Instead, I will spend the next week focusing on what was selling my game, the artwork. I will upgrade this and turn that into my final project.

With this being quite the drastic shift, I've had a lot of thinking to do today. My plan of attack is somewhat as follows.

With the artwork I currently have:

1) Backstory - This explains Franklin's character, where he's come from to what has happened to him with the release of his inner monster and his current location, being stuck within his own mind having lost control over his physical self to his inner monster. My plan here is just to refine the artwork and perhaps think about animating a few more parts of it. Currently I just have the frame describing his growing up animated, and then some few frames during the scene of him within his mind are stitched together, these are animated in that they fade in and out from each other.

2) Final Cinematic Sequence - This is split up into two parts. It shows Franklin confronting his inner monster. He is filled with confidence and feeling very positive, the inner monster has lost. In part 1 the monster realizes his defeat and makes a run. In part 2 after Franklin catches him in the bonus level, he is defeated by Franklin and Franklin returns to the real world. With this I plan to upgrade the artwork as not all frames are as good as each other, and ill likely animate a few to keep it in line with the style of the backstory.

3) Memory Sequences - These are the sequences that played out after each level was won. They show Franklin identifying the cause of his anger which in turn releases the negative energy which Franklin is to cleanse to move onto the next level.

This was the area I spent a lot of time thinking about today. What was brought up in the talk was that the negative energy part needed work. I myself, was also never really happy with how Franklin went about cleansing the negative energy. This part which is of great importance to the game, played out rather quick and with not much thought. To solve both these things, I came up with this:

After identifying the cause of his anger, Franklin then looks at the bigger picture - This picture being the one highlighting the negative cause of his anger.

For the first memory it is him being teased by the bullies at school for not being allowed to watch the TV show. For the second, his parents denying him a skateboard deeming it too dangerous sport and for the third, him being isolated, feeling resentment towards his friend for being accepted into the school soccer team over him.

Frame zooms in, Franklin breaks down the picture, looking at his negative feelings and then contrasting them with the positive side which he can now see, being older, that much the wiser.

Memory 1:

Positive

- His peers were sheep. People were following other people, liking the show only because they did.

- Stripping away the nostalgia, the show appears quite different. It's not that great. His parents knew this, viewing it from their own experience, objectively and unfiltered. The show was no good for him.

Negative

- He was the only one in the whole school not allowed to watch it. He was teased by his peers.

- It was not too violent! It's awesome, Captain Awesome! His parents were being unfair!

Memory 2:

Positive

- His parents were just being protective as parents do. If anything, it just shows they cared.

- Nowadays it would be fine, but back then being so young, he could have been hurt.

Negative

- "You think you know what's good for me? I know!"

- "It's not too dangerous!"

Memory 3:

Positive

- A true friend would have been happy for the other, at the end of the day the better man won.

- Franklin was at fault, being incredibly unsportsmanlike.

Negative

- He didn't even want the position on the team, not like Franklin did!

- "What a rip off! He always gets everything!"

In terms of artwork for this I would have 3 scenes for each. 1 to show the negative, which is those frames I have already. Then 2 more each to show the positive.

Memory 1 - 1 scene shows his peers turning into sheep, hopping about. 1 scene focussed on the TV show, average show.

Memory 2 - 1 scene about being protective, 1 to show what could have happened. He could have been hurt, being so young.

Memory 3 - 1 scene of him congratulating his friend Lucas, 1 depicting his being unsportsmanlike.

Once Franklin has then looked to the positive side to the situation, a Dark Franklin of the Franklin depicted in the negative picture, i.e Age 5, 7 and 10, will be released from the picture, exposed. Franklin's positivity/confidence will see it cleansed (it will fade out). I decided to use "Negative Emotion" as the fuel that created the inner monster rather than "Negative Energy", I think emotion makes it easier to understand and it allows me to use monster characters to depict it, which is more in style of everything else rather than floating orbs as I've got it currently. An alternative to this is to just have Dark Anger monsters released rather than dark Franklin's. You could consider these "minions" of sorts to the inner monster.

So that's what I'm looking at for artwork. But the problem I still don't know how to get round is showing the gameplay/levels with this no longer being a game. Gameplay was the part where I failed in making the game so I don't know how to move forward with this, if I even look at this part. Or do I concentrate only on the parts above. Then I'm still a bit lost as to how to present this. With the stuff above being sequences, I guess a video would be one way? Or as a series of animatic like sequences? Or then to keep it in the style of how the backstory is now where players or now readers, read it like a book, going through it at their own pace and clicking the button to move to the next frame.