What is Phaneron?
The real world filtered by our sensory input (sight, hearing, touch, etc.). The term is used not as a filter, but as the mental construct of the world as it is believed to be by an individual, apart from actual reality.
In Layman’s terms it is one’s own perception of reality according to our senses.
Our new game comes from a simple question. How do we convey the concept of a dream within a game?
How do we communicate the way dream worlds are constructed.
How a player might move within them in a way that feels dream-like.
How does this affect the player and the characters in the game psychologically?
Phaneron is a narrative driven, exploration based puzzle game. As the player your goal is to piece together your broken memories by journeying through an abstract dream land.
Fitting into our theme of perception: Phaneron is a layered puzzle game, which requires looking at the environment in different ways in order to understand how to interact with it.
The game will involve the player solving numerous puzzles which use the classic sliding tile games as a template.
At it’s most basic level, the game requires the player to explore the world in third person, using clues and items from the environment in order to solve the tile puzzles correctly.
In our game, you play as Phe, a young adult trying to find their place in the world, whilst suffering from grief after losing their partner. Phe enters this weird ‘dreamland’ which is actually just inside their head, the world is actually an abstract metaphor for a mental breakdown.
Along the way, Phe encounters different doors that lead into memories of their time with their partner. The puzzles in the game almost act as neurons, the player is building back up the connections between them to gain access to new memories.
The overall game story is structured into 5 acts representing the 5 stages of grief.
The 5 stages being, Shock and Denial, Anger, Depression and Detachment, Dialogue and Bargaining, and Acceptance. When the player has reconnected enough of their memories they can reach acceptance: The final memory is the player seeing the grave of their recently lost partner, finally accepting their death.
A couple of weeks ago James went on a caravan trip with his family to Brean in Somerset, and as a little bit of a day out James and his sister decided to walk 2 miles down the coast to Brean Down, a National Trust coastal walk. This place was great, it had amazing views of the surrounding countryside, little coves and interesting relics including an old World War 2 fort. This location just seemed like a great place to base a game around; the depth of the history embedded into the environment.
He went through all the photos with we when he got back and it created some really interesting discussions and seemed like a perfect fit for a lot of the visual ideas we were coming up with.
The world of Phaneron takes inspiration from Brean down, Victorian architecture, geometric designs and surrealist paintings. We want to depict a world that represents a mish-mash of locations, like you would get in an actual dream.
( This painting uses a painting by Jimmy Malachier the original image can be found here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rocks-needed )
This is the basic art style of the game at the moment. We wanted to use contrast in the game’s setting: This is most noticeable between the dream world and the memories. Themes like natural vs manmade, dark and light and the mundane vs the fantastical are things we wish to try to communicate with our art style.
The memories in the game are visually different to the dream land. One is set in reality where the other is extremely abstract and bizarre.
( The two photobashes on the left use these two main images: http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/blogs/staff-secrets-what-do-st-ives and http://loca-love.pl/inspiracje-3/ )
I have been experimenting with different styles. Whilst James has been designing the puzzles, I have been trying out ways to represent them within the context of an environment. Bouncing ideas off each other to create something that excites us both.
Our main character Phe is a grumpy, creative person with a natural sense of curiosity and an analytical mind. They are tidy but not necessarily in appearance, a bit of a loner in general and has a few friends; however the people Phe does have are close to their heart. Phe is a modern character, reflecting todays world Phe is openly genderfluid.
As a sufferer of depression, the recent loss of their partner affects Phe much more.
That's the basis of our new game, everything here is subject to change and will continue to develop over time.
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