"Filled with the Darkness" Contextual

By Michael and Carlye

Filled with The Darkness went through long series of edits and changes before we got to the final product. We originally started out trying to make a counter game. One that lead the player through long series of possibly unending challenges in which the gamer had no real ability to make an educated choice and left the outcome of every decision up to chance. For example not allowing the player to have any feedback to know if they were going the right direction through the maze. This aspect however, we decided was way to cruel and would quickly cause the player to give up and stop playing. So in the end we decided to design it more like an actual game, yet still held onto counter gaming elements. In the end deciding to make a 3D puzzle adventure game, in which you try to escape from prison, facing various challenges as you move from room to room

The main idea the game centers around, one that we have stuck with from the beginning, was the concept of your avatar having to proxy itself through another avatar in order to have an impact on the environment or do anything to advance the game. Originally we had the game set in an intergalactic prison filled with various different alien species. In this scenario we created a couple ideas for how the user was able to control the other prisoners to help them escape. We played around with different plausible ideas for an alien who would be able to do this in the way we wanted. For example, a gimpy Yoda type character that had to be carried on the back of another prisoner, like a Native American baby, dictated the moves of the one carrying you. This however, did not explain why the gamer could actually control the other prisoners, instead of just telling them what to do. Another idea was some sort of parasitic alien that hacked the other prisoner’s nervous system giving diegetic cause for the gamer’s control. But that idea just seemed a little “out there”.

These ideas later lead to concept of a plot that was a digital manifestation of the gamer’s role in a typical adventure video game. A game in which the character not only has to take on an avatar, but also who does not themselves get hurt or die, only the bodies they are currently controlling. Also like a gamer, there is no real need/motivation to even play the game or complete these challenges aside from giving them something to do. In order to really draw the player in, and provide a scenario in which the player could fully conceptualize these ideas, we decided to drop the alien theme. Instead we decided to make the game about a ghost, known as Darkness, which haunts the abandon portion of the prison. Just like the typical idea of a spirit, the character cannot die and has no physical body that can make actual impacts on the world around it. The iconography of a ghost allowed us a character that couldn’t die or get hurt and one that could also “posses” other characters with little or no need for explanation of the diegetics of such abilities. A ghost also is a great representation of a gamer because we can make its physical and personal identity vague enough to transcend race, gender and other demographic divisions and yet still retain a human like quality that the player can relate to and be immersed with. In order to reiterate the purpose of the gamer, or lack there of, Darkness is bound to the prison and though you can help the inmates through the building, you cannot leave and thus have no personal reason to accomplish the goal other then boredom.

One thing we wanted to stress was the effect that the gamer really has on the world from the perspective of someone inside the game. If you really think about how it would look in the real world, the gamer is reckless and destructive and can at times actually make the situation worse for no good reason or personal gain. As gamers we have no caution. This is because it is just a game and what happens to the character we are playing as stays within the game and does not affect us. There is really no reason not to try something risky other then having to go back and do it again if we fail. But if you think about it from the avatars perspective, often we are mercilessly killing and bending the world for our own amusement and not for the benefit of the digital character. What if the lives in Mario were connected to ourselves or the lives of our friends? We would not be quick to try something that we are not positive we can succeed at. For this reason we decided to make it so that if you make a mistake you kill a inmate, often in gruesome ways, and have to inhabit a new different body. This way each life you loose is not a not a copy of the same person, but a different individual whose body will lay there for the remainder of the game as a testament to the person you sacrificed to further a goal that you have no viable reason for pursuing other then to save said life you just destroyed. Though you have an infinite number of inmates to use as lives during the game, no matter how few you kill, the game will always end with a cinematic sequence of you only helping a couple prisoners escape and showing you a number of lifeless bodies you left behind. That way the gamer gets a glimpse of the potential havoc they can wreak on the digital realm.

One last concept we fit into our plans was how gamers just listen to the instructions given without taking into consideration their validity. The game will provide an explanation of each challenge may or may not be exactly right. Though mostly correct, at times it could be just a little off, but just enough to give make you think you could have just read them wrong or took them too literally. For example, the instructions of one challenge says you need pick a leaver to flip, then a rope to pull, and finally a button to press and hope you got the right combo. But in actuality the order is slightly off because you need to pull a rope, flip a leaver, and then press a button.