P3 – Synesthetic Garden
Intro
You wake up from a deep dream. The place doesn’t look familiar at all. All you have is ability to “feel” the world around you. Yet, nothing seems to be in place. There doesn’t seem to be a way out. Only thing that you can do for now is to explore the world. Perhaps, you are still dreaming.
Player controls
Ideally, the player would use a game controller with capability of vibration feed back and head phones. The player can move around in a 2D world using the left thumbs stick. The player can switch out which synesthetic ability they would like to use to explore the environment using L1 & R1. After equipping the desired skill, the player can use their “sense” abilities using L2 & R2. Other buttons will be omitted for simplicity.
Goals
For this prototype, the player will be able to explore the world with various “sensors” that will give different feedback. You can treat “sensors” as different skill sets to fell the world. The feedback will come in combination of vibrations, visuals, audio and collision. Each combination should feel distinct and unique giving the world a unique character. In another world, the player will be exploring the world with virtual synesthesia. One input from the world (or from the player), will result in two or more output to the player.
Example
So the basic idea is that the player would receive multiple outputs from a single input, either from the world or the player. Though you may receive multiple outputs, not all has the same strength. For instance, if you put on your “audio” skill, you will be mainly be able to hear the world. However, you may feel a little bit of vibration from the controller or see colors pulsing through. Hopefully, all these sensory output won’t be too much to intake for the user. There needs to be a “main” sense coming through and the rest senses are blending in lightly.
At a high level, the idea of presenting multiple “views” of the world, each of which presumably has a different advantage, is interesting (even with visuals, think “the view while wearing the ring in the lord of the rings movies”).
But, you need to be much more specific about (a) what these would be and (b) what the game is! Both are omitted above. The player wakes up and needs to explore … why? What are they doing? What is their goal? Answer the “why” question, and that can help you figure out what the different abilities are and how they interact.
You’ve only described a vague framework above: one input -> multiple outputs; when one skill is primary the others are still there faintly, etc. But, what does that mean? Can you give a concrete example of what the game would be and how you would leverage this?