Project Have Fun

     For my Project Have Fun idea I decided to do a first person survival horror. I love zombies, and if you don’t know this by now you should leave my life. Forever. But in all seriousness, I wanted to do a game that I felt passionate about, I adore the way survival horrors make me feel, the feeling that you get when your smashing a zombies head in, or when something jumps out at you and you jump through the ceiling.

    For the environment I decided to base my game in a hospital. I started by thinking of all the places I found scary, I went through all the stereotypical places, like a graveyard, hotel or abandoned mansion. I finally decided on a hospital . Hospitals are were all different people with all different diseases gather. Nobody enjoys visiting a hospital, and they can be big and foreboding with an air of death around them. What better place to set a survival horror game?

    So I thought of all the different areas you can get in a hospital, ranging from the CT scanner room, to the parking, to the reception area. I produced some concept art into my sketchbook and decided to base my concept art in a hallway as this would give me more scope when adding items into the scene. Mise-en-scene can play an important part in an environment. I drew some concepts of different types of hallway and decided to use different parts of a few of the ideas. I wanted to add a lift, to play on the fear of claustrophobia. If you are a fan of the horror genre, then you should know, if the apocalypse is to come, stay away from lifts. It is no time to be lazy. I decided to use an open ward in the background so I can play with lighting in the scene. I want my scene to be very dark, which will play on the phobia of the dark, Nyctophobia.

   Onto Character design, I decided to stick with two characters, a man and a woman because sexual tension sells. I decided to have the women have an authorities job, I played with the different job roles in the hospital. After looking at the concepts I made the decision of choosing to make her a surgeon. She will be head strong and an independent women. She will have to save the other character, by performing minor surgery on him. The male character will be used to emotionally manipulate the audience. He will be a minor criminal, using guns and robbing occasionally. He will end up at the hospital after getting into trouble with the law. At first, we  will see him as  a baddie, as he has done bad in his life, however, he changes himself for the better (this will be his character arc) by helping and protecting the surgeon. He will also teach the surgeon the way of using guns. This will show us a character change, as she used to save lives, but now she is taking the life away from the zombies. These are the basic ideas I have made for my characters. They each have an individual character arc, which will give them new meaning to their life.

    The final concept art will take place in a hospital environment, in a hallway with an open ward and a lift. There will be a small amount of lighting, as the game is mainly set in the dark. I will add some darkness in the foreground to make the darkness personified, to make it appear that the zombies are chasing the characters. I will place the two characters in the middle of the scene. The male will be standing behind the woman in a protective stance, grabbing his gun with another weapon in his other hand. The woman will be in front of him turning around to see the darkness behind them. The scene will have hardly any colour, except red for blood, to represent danger. The platform I will base my game on is PS3, and will have a recognized standard ratio of 16:9.