[ardskapedevkitchenlog_3]

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To save them all and light the tree

The lanterns shine on merrily

The 7th one spreads fins to fly

With all of them

Or some have died.

Though with a deeper jump for heaven

The Player mumbles

“We are Seven”.

ARDSKAPE here.

Two artists with no drugs but unsealed doors of perception.

First dare JAM. Not even morally prepared.

Here for the final take on what’s beyond the 7 DEEPS game and why we can cross plenty of ideas, but not this one.

It’s looped, but there’s a flying window.

Face the mirror. F(ace) yourself.

[go deeper]

Day_3. The morning started late, when most people were already in their cubes. Personally I had some script for the kid show going on, but this time LD was the priority (and aye, the kid's script also went out fine).

This day was the refinement of ideas and presenting them within Unity. The most artwork was done, so basically we had to put it all together in one piece and make it work.

The idea of loops was in the game script already. So I just connected the dots, making 4 possible loops, with 3 of them redirecting you from different scenes to the beginning, and 1 central with mostly a moral wordplay compensation, to let you better understand the attitude of the white door (white-ish background) and the One who turned back on his… fishes.

We had no time to implement the actual choose+click&drag mechanics (candy or feather), in spite we added timed choices that would make you think faster, therefore creating suspense in your mind with the fewest options possible.

We also decided to lose the colours. Firsthand, the idea was that lanterns (paper/chinese ones, which also corresponds to final flying) were RGB related, but it seemed more complicated than it needed to be. So we went with numbers, and the colour choices in game got to bear more of a traffic light meaning, starting with choosing Red (deep - in danger) to get further.

Some choices give you references on H. Ellison's "I have no mouth and I must scream", Monkey Island (and the hunt for infamous Big Whoop as a metaphor on whatever is luring the children/fishes deeper), "Doors of Perception" by A. Huxley (with a hint to W. Blake's "Songs of..." poetry).

We wanted to reveal the lore closer to the end. Right after mentioning the nearby existence of some kind of Lovecraftian Deep Ones. All three endings are actually telling a single whole story from different angles, and the full understanding of this Story is yet to be revealed in the expanded and upgraded, deepened recomputing of our game.

The final art, however weird, is connected to the lore (presented in most of our projects) on some radio sound/noise that cleans and equalizes the universal frequencies (a similarity to pink noise here).

Door/window/mirror concept is related to a feeling of how one soul/man could dive in pitch black night as passing through the glowing frames (the only lead, not to get deep-devoured). With some "stranger things" happening along with a possible psychic intelligence, or scrying (the act of magic convolution through spreading water over a mirror).

Which is why our slogan is: ARDSKAPE. Mind scrying game experience.

Thank you for playing, criticism, suggestions, insights. This jam has had a huge meaning for us, as a newly wed team.

Follow us, if you wish. Or remember, at least.

There'll be more deep scrying experiences.

7 DEEPS

Go Dare.

[do go deeper]