Brothers in Arms

Here is Micah, the Antagonist of the game. he is salems unstable brother. gave his face paint more of a jagged look to emphasize his turn to bad and the red X is a symbol of Xorns hold over him.
The pale eyes just happened but i think its reminiscent of Anakin skywalker when he turns to the dark side.

Salem - the good brother. Same sort of theme as Micah but he is wearing a variation of the original Zork armour along with Zork sword.

Sell Sheet - Something Different

My sell sheet is sealed inside with the Zork insignia.

A map of Belaenas back is also inside as something memorable for the pitch. 

Zorks sword

Zork's original sword which is passed down through the later generations of zork.
the blade was originally made of flint. The handle is Polar bear femur and the hilt is sharpened polar bear ribs with dyed polar bear hide for the handle wrap. With Decorative feathers to honour the spirits hanging from the sword.
This is the default weapon in Tales of The Zork.

game HUD ideas.

First iteration - basic idea of using feather as life since he is influenced by Native American culture.
Black out weapon select on the side and basic compass with waypoint bottom left corner, this layout is mainly influenced by GTA 

Second iteration - Zork Culture hang Feathers from there blades for good luck and for favours to the spirit. so this idea stems from them using feathers as decoration, doubling the weapon select HUD with the Life HUD

Example of what would happen if you lost life. a feather would turn dark read a fall from your weapon off screen.

myrith's swamp environment progress.

Possible environment

idea for myriths swamp landscape.

Sell Sheet V.1

Map Final Design

final map

grid mode which can be toggled in the map screen, this is to allow for coordinates to be shared among players.

Route the games story will take you. As you can see, in order to explore the whole map you would have to 'go of the beaten track' so to speak.

what the map screen will look like.

Contol Scheme

Pretty basic controls. I want Zork to be accessible to a wide scope of ages so i didn't go to complex.
I think what makes this layout good is that the combat is almost completely refined to the shoulder buttons.
This would make for quick fight situations.

Del Toro and His Monstrous Side

Guillermo del Toro is the acclaimed director of such films as Blade 2, Hellboy 1 & 2, Pans Labyrinth and many more. If one thing stands out in these films it is the creature design.

For this project, Del Toro will influence my creature design; I believe he has a way of creating these ancient looking creatures which while they may be no threat to the protagonist, look like they came from hell itself.

This is what a troll looks like in del Toro's mind

Blade 2 introduced super vampires, named Reapers, into the story. Jared Nomak is the leader of the reapers and the strongest. What makes him so sinister is that he maintains a human like appearance but one that is severely distorted. The Pale white skin is reminiscent of Nosferatu and the veins exemplify this pained look that Nomak carries, which works well with his characters story. What really interest me with Nomaks design are the eyes, seen below as being pure white.

The thing with eyes is that they can reveal a person to you by the first time look at them, People can have kind eyes or cold eyes or even sinister eyes. Del Toro manages to really capture the inhuman evil looking eyes with all his monsters but Nomaks eyes seem to show a tragic, twisted monster whenever the film captures his face.

A hideous monster and a vampire

You can debate whether the Hellboy series was good or not but either way del Toro really captured the supernatural feel to Hellboy’s cast and characters. Not only with Hellboy himself but also the background monsters and side characters. Abe Sapien, Hellboy best friend and partner is a half man - half sea creature, in the comic books Abe was once human and was changed into the creature through an occult ritual. He maintains his human like appearance albeit with a highly changed fish-like form, his skin is almost always has a wet appearance to it along with gills and fins around his body.

Since Abe is to be considered a ‘friendly monster’ there are no fangs or claws to be seen on him and his facial appearance comes across as that of a gormless fish.

It is important to take into account the role that the creature will play in the game world before designing it, if the creature is to be a kind one then features such as claws need to be toned down.

One final creature that really captures the viewer’s imagination is the Angel of Death. Whilst this character is actually a help to the protagonist, it comes across as a very sinister and evil creature. The monster gives the feeling across that whilst it can help if the situation is needed it is most definitely a force to be reckoned with.

Stuff of Nightmares

Del Toro most critically acclaimed film was Pan’s labyrinth, not least for which was the amazing creature design. Pan himself comes across as a figure that has lived for centuries and is literally part of the forest with his moss like hair and wooden appearance. Pan himself gives both the impression of trustworthiness as well as a sinister feel that you should not trust him at all. This is proven by faun task to bring the young girl back to the underworld (killing her).

Moss-like hair, wooden appearance and huge goat horns.
what's not to trust?

The other creature in Pan’s Labyrinth is the ‘Pale man’, a child eating monster that is awakened when someone eats something from the feast at which he lays dormant. Again del Toro captures the essence of the character through the eyes, in this case they are located on his hands, solidly breaking the human form and distancing this monster from any kind of humanity. The pale man also has blackened claws at the end of his hands implying danger.

The pale mans scene is generally terrifying to watch and he comes across as an unstoppable force.

Looking at del Toro’s movies generate many ideas for me and using his influence for my game will definitely give the game a fantastical, fairy tale like theme. I believe I may add a Faun somewhere in the game as a tribute.

Troll hellboy 2 - http://www.latinoreview.com/news/exclusive-hellboy-ii-interview-with-creature-effects-shop-spectral-motion-4976

Del toro and faun - http://mutantville.com/blog/3393/guillermo-del-toro-with-mvps-inspirational-filmmaker-quote-of-the-week/

Pale man - http://fantasticvoyages.wordpress.com/

Nomak and del toro - http://www.gamesradar.com/director-of-pans-labyrinth-and-hellboy-now-making-video-games-4-reasons-you-need-to-care/

Angel of death - http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/galleries/the_monsters_of_guillermo_del_toro/the_monsters_of_guillermo_del_toro.html

Cast of hellboy - http://www.totalfilm.com/features/guillermo-del-toro-on-making-the-hobbit

Map update 2

revised the mountains added a few things.
im getting close to finishing this now as i need to focus on other concepts.
La pohaku is hawaiian for sun-stone. The culture on that island is based on the samoans and will have large exotic stone faces on the coast line.

Map update

Some of these words have translations, some are gibberish.
Baleana is latin for whale meaning whales back. i figured i could add some cool mythology about how the land rests on a giant whale.

Building up Zorks World.

The as of yet unnamed world of Zork.
Zork himself would of been born of the map in a far of land. I'm going to add mountain, cities, road and forest to this map to decorate it in a tolkienesque mannor.
More to come.

Zork Memorial

This is an update to Zorks concept, here he is in statue form as he is dead by the time your characters stories starts.

What i wanted was a wooden statue carved from a tall oak tree, but i struggled with capturing the wooden look, i may redo this at a later date.

Zork Revealed (in progress) Update

In my games mythology, Zork went on from saving the land to founding a whole culture from which you descend. Before this, he came from a cold land that wore Snow wolves fur to keep warm. his armour is mainly hides trimmed with wolf fur. His swords handle is made from the spinal cord of polar bears along with the hilt which is made with sharpened rib cage. This is to reflect real Native American custom of hunting the buffalo (sparingly) and making use of every aspect of the creatures body, more as a sign of respect to the buffalo than anything else. The hilt is trimmed with the feathers of a bird he found along his journeys in the new land.
The land which he colonised is nowhere near as cold, therefore your people do not wear as much furs, but the customs and general sense of fashion is continued.

I think i'll colour this as a proper character concept but also re-colour it as a statue for an environment.
As i was drawing this, i kept thinking "Native American Knight" so i may continue that theme.

Zork Revealed (in progress)

So here is what Zork will look like in the game, although Zork is officially dead for nearly a millennia by the time your characters story starts. This i will turn into a Huge statue in his honour, the aim being to create a sense of scale and to show some of the environments within the game.
When i actually make him a statue, i'll simplify aspects such as the fur.

Armour, clothes and colour to come.
His face is covered to create a sense of mystery which i hope to maintain throughout the game.

 Zork and his culture are going to be based off American Indian cultures but slightly more advanced. His descendant and the player's characters design will be in the same vein as Zorks but slightly more refined as a 1000 years has passed and the culture has grown.

Story in a Nut shell

-In honour of a Great hero your culture pays respect by selecting a youth to take on his role and help keep the land safe.

-This generation you are to be picked

-Your brother finds out and gets jealous, accidentally kills the priest who chose you and slowly descends into madness.

-Before you are aware of your role as the next 'Zork' your brother leaves your home and proceeds to go cause havoc for the land.

-Since it is your role to protect the land, you are tasked with returning or killing your brother.

-As your brothers descends into madness, he begins being manipulated by an ancient evil named Xorn

-Xorn manipulates your brother into eventually releasing him

-In order to stop Xorn and 'save' your brother you must seek out various artefacts, which power keeps Xorn locked up in a 'magic' cell.

-Games main story consists of you travelling from land to land completing various tasks to gain these artefacts as you witness your brothers tragic fall into villainy

Story Development

I’m still bit hazy in terms of storyline for my game, which is strange for me as usually it’s always the story and characters which come first when I am presented with a brief and usually I will not add gameplay mechanics or ideas until can figure what sort of tone the game will have.

I don’t want my game world to be tied down by a certain genre or theme, for instance I wouldn’t want it to have a medieval theme and not be able to feature machinery or out of era characters such as pirates.  Obviously this is within reason however as I wouldn’t want to make the world based around historical eras and feature ray guns or hover cars, this however can be replaced by the inclusion of magic to allow for certain liberties.

I have a basic idea in my head that came from recently watching Marvel Comics movie Thor. In Thor the protagonist Thor, is brother to Loki and they share a close relationship. As the film progresses Loki and Thor’s relationship gets increasingly strained and as Thor witnesses his brothers decent into darkness he is unable to save him from himself and eventually fails in saving Loki from apparent death. The Reason for the relationships decay is the right to rule. Loki and Thor are close in age, I believe Thor to be a little older, Loki as a child was always envious of Thor but it was a sense of admiration. When it came to there father Odin naming the next king Loki became jealous and felt that he was always in his brother shadow. Loki proceeded to manipulate events so that Thor would be banished and Loki would become king, despite his actions however Thor try to save Loki.

The family within Marvel comics Thor has been described multiple times as Shakespearean in nature and it is this theme I would like to replicate.

Watching Thor & Loki's relationship dissolve is a powerful aspect of Thor's story

I’m not fond of the name Zork; it’s hard to take a character seriously with that name and as a world Zork sounds a little juvenile; therefore I am trying to feature something as Zork that won’t give the wrong impression on the games tone.

My idea is to have a race of humans that differ in some aspect to standard humanity reminiscent of Tolkien’s Elves and Dwarves, by this I mean they have a longer life span and are more hardy compared to humans, this is also like the Asgardians in Marvels Thor Mythos.

Tolkien's Elves have a larger lifespan and are generally wiser then the humans of middle earth
Elrond stubbed his toe. 

This race stays on an island offshore of the mainland and mainly stick to their own community, there rules state they mustn’t interfere with the affairs of other races, this includes war. If others seek there help then they will give it otherwise they are very solitary. This race however breaks this rule for one person in every generation when a youth is selected as the next to complete the Zork ritual.

In my games mythology Zork was an ancestor of this race, and stopped a century long war and united the land by vanquishing the Demon Xorn, shortly after he exiled himself and founded the races home island. In his honour one person from the race is selected at random to complete a large heroic task or good deed.

Sometimes this means a mammoth task for the person or sometimes it means just building a hospital depending on the state of the world at the time of the participant.

Your Brother has dreamed of leaving the island since a young age and becoming the lands savour like the legend of Zork, however he finds out by act of sleuth that you, his younger brother have been picked to complete the ritual. This makes him insanely jealous and in a fit of rage kills the priest who selected you. Scared and deprived your brother leaves the island and continues to wreak havoc among the land. When you’re announced as the next Zork you are aware that in order to uphold your duty, you must stop your brothers rampage.

You are tasked with either returning him home or stopping him altogether.

From this point the game begins properly and you are free to roam the world committing good deeds however soon on in the story you realise that a great veil of evil has covered the land such as monsters and mayhem as a result of your brothers madness. Later on in the story you become aware that the spirit of the Demon Xorn that was vanquished by your ancestor years ago is manipulating your brother. Xorns aim is to use your brother to release him so he can unleash chaos upon the world once more.

Xorns power is held captive by various artefacts that Zork used to seal Xorn away centuries ago, the player has to seek these objects out and return them to the resting place of Xorn to reinforce his Jail.

Throughout the game I want to emphasize the relationship between the brothers and have the player witness your brothers decent into madness. At one point I want the brother to seem like he is finally coming around and redeemable but that is when Xorn makes his sanity go from bad to worse and most hope is lost for your brother. If I can emphasize the brother’s relationship early on then I believe the player will sympathise with your characters situation and want to save the brother as much as the fictional character wants to.

This is complex to say the least but in the next post I will simplify the main points of the plot/gameplay.

Thor and Loki - http://www.aceshowbiz.com/still/00002535/thor_chris09.html

Tolkiens elf -  http://www.modaruniversity.org/Blackmaille37.htm

Real Time Events and Creating a Fun World

One of my fondest games from my childhood was The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask, I was occupied for hours trying to work out the patterns and behaviours of the side characters at certain times of the day and what happens when you disrupted this process. For instance a Goron by the name of Link checks into a hotel on the first night, but in order to gain a special mask you need to get into the hotel after hours, so you have to figure out where the goron is before he checks in and take his reservation. Once you have done this it sets of a chain of events that the player has to navigate to gain the special mask.

Link with Link the Goron, who is sleeping outside the hotel after you steal his reservation

Another game that implemented Real-time events was GTA: San Andreas. One example is the easter egg featured named the ‘suicidal Photographer’, the player would find him in a certain area of the map at 17:32 each day, he would proceed to take your picture and then jump in the sea thus drowning. It definitely prolonged the games life for me as I spent hours seeking these secret events out. 

shortly after this photo was taken, Jimmy killed himself. Our thoughts go out to his virtual family.

While I don’t want to mimic this per say I do want to take inspiration from it, the reason it worked in Majoras Mask was that you played the same 3 days over and over therefore the characters patterns could be noted, since I don’t plan on including time travel in my game this would not work. That being said, certain events such as the postman arriving in certain areas at certain times can be implemented, it gives the player a sense of a working world and makes the experience more immersive.

People do tend to stick to schedules in real life as well such as leaving the house to get to work each day. One example of this is at NUCA itself, when I arrive at the University in the mornings I usually have to wait a while for certain friends to arrive so I wait in a nearby park. I have noticed that at around 9:00 am every day an elderly man comes by and feeds the pigeons with breadcrumbs, sits down for a few minutes and moves on. This kind of event would be amazing to replicate in a game, what if your player came across him and if engaged in conversation he offered some wise advice and gave the player a special item? It would definitely make the game richer and it creates a more in depth and immersive world to explore.

These events would also back up the idea of a Community for the players to interact with, if a player was to come across such an event he/she could post there findings on the games website and allow other players to follow there steps.

San andreas screen - http://quizilla.teennick.com/stories/17896590/grand-theft-auto-san-andreas-myth-list-2

Goron link screen - http://www.zeldawiki.org/Link_(Goron) 

Community within Zork

Nobody is going to want to travel into the unknown without a little help, in real life people stay in hotels with good word of mouth from friends, visit countries with the aid of tour books and travel to unknown areas via a sat nav. With this in mind I want the community of Zork players to be the aid in which the player gets through the world of Zork.

Dark souls implements a feature that allows other players to leave notes and helpful hints along the game world to make it a little easier to navigate the harsh task throughout, this inspired the idea of having the community of Zork fill in the corners of the map together.

Not the best advice, at least he tried.

If the players were to opt for the Zork+ mode or even if they didn’t, they could visit the games website or the equivalent forum which I would integrate to the in-game libraries and be able to browse through different players findings.

For instance if a player had found a nice landscape secret such as a waterfall which leads into a secret cavern, he/she could then post a screen shot of the area along with the coordinates on the map to allow other players to read his post and find the area for themselves.

If the community were to base these actions on the Zork main website forum, I would predict that there would be one main thread that focused on the whole community trying to fill out the map together.

Dark Souls screen - http://uk.gamespot.com/xbox360/rpg/dark-souls/images/6337624/2/?tag=imagenav%3Bprev

Getting Lost and Found in Zork - Exploration and Discovery

I am still at a bit of a loss on what I would like the narrative to focus on but I seem to be ok in refining the game play aspect of the game.

The main focus of my game is exploration, I want the player to be able to play through the whole story and only have seen 30% of the map, alternatively I want the player to be able to completely disregard the story if they choose so they can focus on getting lost and finding amazing wonders. To achieve this the game would have to be mainly a sandbox experience.

When the player starts the game and is let loose on the open world, his map will be blank. Some drawings will remain indicating villages of necessary points of interest such as a library or doctor.

As you walk a route the map will become more and more visible, roads you have walked before will be marked on the map for later reference along with points of interest. The map will function in the same vein as G.T.A IV’s with the player able to lay down waypoints to follow. If the player has walked the path before than the road will be highlighted on the in-game compass, if not then the waypoint will just be visible on the compass for the player to make there own way there.

Signposts will be featured throughout the game for the player to follow to villages and towns. If the player needs the extra help or just wants to focus on the main game without exploration then they have the choice of purchasing an in-game map which highlights the roads ahead for certain areas, a map will be made available for the main roads. These will mark out the main route on the in-game map for the player.

Example of the waypoint system in GTA laying out the route ahead. probably towards guns or drugs.

I plan to add a plethora of secret locations and points of marvel for the players to seek out such as; statues/memorials, caves, specialist shops, waterfalls and other various points of interest. The player will come across these points and if they see fit they can lay down a marker or a ‘flag of discovery’ to mark it on the map, at this point the player will be asked what they wish to name the area. This means areas of little aesthetical importance can be named in note form such as “Special Axe Spawn point” but areas that are meant to be appreciated or are of importance will already be named but can renamed at the players will. This gives the player some degree of control over the world and a sense of exploration and discovery but also allows for silly and humorous results. Villages and areas that are known of or lived in will have a set name.

Since I intend the map to be of a large scale, quick travel is a necessity but I want to keep the player from using it until the first few missions are completed. I intend this to be based of Red Dead Redemptions quick travel system where you set up camp in any area and have the option of travelling to visited towns.

Camp quick travel was standard for all cowboys during the era of the wild west

The finale of my games Exploration and discovery feature is the Zork+ mode.  This will act as a hardcore mode, it is only recommended for the most dedicated of gamers and I intend it to be a way of forming a close game community.

This mode effectively turns of the in game map and if a route is walked it is not marked out permanently, however the game when purchased will include a map of the game world without the roads marked on. The player then has to mark out the route he has walked in the game for later reference. I am aware this is a mammoth task therefore two version of the game will be released one with the map template and another with the template and an already completed map minus the secret locations.

But if the player does choose to make the map himself then they can seek help through Zork online community, which I will talk about in my next post.

RDR Campsite screen - http://reddead.wikia.com/wiki/Basic_Campsite

GTA map - http://gta.wikia.com/GPS

First Thoughts..

Initially when I heard ‘Zork’ I thought of a pirate type of adventure, with different species of humanoid creatures making up the crew of a ship. I believe this link was made due to the text-base genre later basically evolving into Point and click games. My favourite of these being Monkey Island, thus I linked pirates.

Monkey Island and its iconic humour

Tetra and her pirate crew from Wind Waker

As of yet I don’t have a story for the game, which is troublesome, as I can’t come up with a viable concept for a protagonist without an idea of where the story is going. I’d like to keep the idea of a pirate main character but his motivation would be hard to spin. By this I mean a pirates stereotypical motive would be treasure but I believe this would make a hollow experience for the player.

I thought of maybe having the main character run off to join a pirate crew, in a similar vein to treasure island, with the protagonist being a naïve teen. I’m not set on this idea but I like the sea travel aspect. I’m a big fan of the Legend of Zelda series and the Wind Waker instalment to the series introduced sea travel.

Sea for a far as you can see!

My experience with the sea travel was rather pleasant I could lose hours just navigating the waves, it was a rather tranquil experience, one that I hope to replicate.

Wind Waker screen - http://highwayseventeenrevisited.blogspot.com/2010/08/3-legend-of-zelda-wind-waker.html

Tetra’s pirates screen - http://zelda.wikia.com/wiki/Tetra's_Pirates

Monkey island screen - http://www.marcopennacchiotti.com/tsomi/tsomi.html

What is a 'Zork' !?

This project, we are tasked to re-imagine one of five existing game for a modern audience. The games range in age from around the 70’s and 80’s, which is better then having an IP like for instance Mario, which is still fresh and current by gaming standards.

The games at there time of release were huge successes but have not aged well, the market has evolved but this is not to say that the ideas are any more sophisticated. Plot has tended to evolve a lot but it seems that when someone is asked about the current trend of gaming, FPS comes to mind.  Point and shoot is something I would like to stay away from no matter what game I am re-imagining.

With this in mind I got given Adventure/Zork, a text based game made by Infocom in the late 70’s. There is very little plot involved with Zork other then you have to find treasures from around the game world and get out alive with them. In the original there were minimal enemies, in my play through I have only come across a single troll.

Let the excitement roll..

So I have a lot of room to make this game my own, I have to maintain some aspects of the original but the only certain aspect I must keep is the title. I believe I’ll focus on the adventure and exploration more then anything else with benefits of finding rare treasures throughout the game.

The name Zork is fairly unattractive to me personally; it implies a juvenile character reminiscent of Jaks and Daxter or Ratchet and Clank, so I may try to be a little creative with what ‘Zork’ is within my version of the game. Zork was originally MIT hacker slang for an unfinished program and infocom were forced to keep Zork since they were threatened with legal action when they named the game dungeon. I believe Zork is the name of the game world itself so that’s always an option.

 Later installations to the Zork trilogy added in the use of magic spells, demons and time sensitive events. I like the idea of adding some form of demon, in Zork II the demon acted as a character which the player could trade and barter with, this is reminiscent of the devil in some folk lore in which a character is makes deals and trades with the devil in exchange for undeniable wealth or something out the reach of normal men. Time sensitive events are usually a given with modern gaming as most AI acts on real-time actions.

As for magic, I would like it included but possible not as a basis of combat, I think I’d like to include as an upgrade system, for instance adding a spell to your weapon to encase it in fire for extra damage. Magic would still be used by npc’s as I feel it enriches the worlds Mythos.

Out of all the 5 games I feel this was the most open in terms of what I can do with the IP.

Zork Screenshot - http://levgrossman.com/tag/zork/

Zork Online playable game - http://pot.home.xs4all.nl/infocom/zork1.html