Week 6: Getting Started

Project Overview

Azimuth is a dark fantasy visual novel about a young mage, a ruined land, and a daring escape. Our goal for this project is to explore the role of player agency and character relationships in narrative-heavy games. After a few weeks of preliminary research, our team has now jumped into the pre-production stage, beginning work on story outlines, concept art, and prototyping.

Story

Narrative forms the core of our game, so we kicked off our 25% sprint by honing in on the type of story we wanted to tell. From the beginning, we knew we wanted to create a narrative in which the player has limited agency, acting more as a supporting character than the protagonist. We felt that a fantasy genre would fit this concept well, since we could leverage the concept of magic, the wandering adventurer, and other related tropes to explore these ideas in interesting ways. We started off by defining the basic premise of the story: You are a powerful sorcerer trapped inside an amulet. One day, a desperate mage offers to free you, but first you must help her rescue her missing friend.

From there, we began to flesh out the setting, deciding on a post-apocalyptic ruin full of lawless mercenaries and warmongering lords. Magic is a rarity here, and those who possess it are often ruthlessly hunted for their power. We also delved deeper into the major characters’ identities, as well as the enemies they will face. Lastly, we began work on our prologue, drafting an outline and early version of the first scene for prototyping purposes.

Art

During our first sprint, we also placed a heavy emphasis on concept art. With the story’s overarching plot established, we created a range of concepts for our environments, characters, and other elements. In terms of environments, we mainly focused on the cave, where the prologue takes place, and the dilapidated interior/exterior of the Goldstone Fortress, where the player will spend the remainder of the game. 

We also produced some character sketches, starting with a few iterations for the amulet, which represents the player. In addition, we also tested out some designs for Miren, the main (non-player) character and the Goldstone Knights, the enemy faction whose fortress the player must infiltrate.

At the top of this post is a selection of our mood boards and concept art.

Prototyping

We wanted to start implementing our mechanics as soon as possible, so we created a basic prototype in Twine to test major concepts. We included a companion approval score to let the player know when they make decisions that Miren approves or disapproves of. We also tested choices that require the player to pass a persuasion check based on a random dice roll and their current approval score.

Tasks and Timekeeping

• Makiyah (Total: ~9 hours)
  • Created concept art for Miren and the Goldstone Knights: 5 hours
  • Wrote worldbuilding overview and started prologue draft: 3 hours
  • Compiled the work blog: 1 hour
• Jadin (Total: ~5 hours)
  • Created concept art for the cave, surrounding area, and the Goldstone Fortress: 4.25 hours
  • Created concept art for the amulet and companion approval bar: 0.5 hour
• Andrew (Total: ~5 hours)
  • Created initial prototype with branching choices, persuasion rolls, and companion approval score: 5 hours