📍 Key Locations
The Farm
General description
This is the safe zone, also this is the location for tutorial level and exposition cut scenes. The location of the farm and the farm house is set in North of Iran, near mountains and jungles (not desserts) it snows relatively frequently.
The Game start location is the place where villager hold their town meeting as its the chief's home!
Inspiration
There is village in north of Iran that I got some of my inspirations from called Ozkala. It has mountains and jungles all around the village. I feel like the layout of the village will be similar to Ozkala, but it wouldn't be an exact replica.
Ozkala
The following are some picture and the sources of Ozkala for inspirational purposes
https://www.instagram.com/p/CFL8pWJByFn/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Birds eye view
The right side of the image above is a mountain that is connected to the jungles and farms that leads to the village. That is similar to what I had imagined for the game.
The in game design for the farm as a whole is shown here. It is only a rough sketch but it shows almost every important point of entry!
I've tried to have the map loosely based on the shape of a heart, showing the importance of heart in the game
The Army base (Main Gameplay Area) would be the other side of the mountain on the rail road but the river connects the two and Darius's house would be on the farm that is on the closes line of pedestrian path by the river.
Levels that use this area
Connections to other areas
The Jungle
The original map design in the pre-pre-production was like the following:
Green squares are tree lines
The half a circles are large rocks that are not climbable.
The blue is the obstical that the player can walk through only by using the Q power
Example of this section is available on Unity Prototype.
The images used to explain the prototype is set for this part of the map
General description
Its the Warm-up section of the game. The easiest section so that the players can get used to the mechanics with no real and immediate danger. We have already introduced the mechanics to the players on the The Farm level, but here they get to use it with out having their hands held.
However the deeper they go into the jungle, the closer they get to the military base, where all the danger resides.
The size of the Jungle will be bigger than original design but it depends of time and budget. Naturally, it would be great [Stretch Goal] if they have enough room and obsticles to continuously be able to use the power, and creatively, in anyways they want, not by just the one way we plan for them. not sure if that made sense so I am going to explain it further: imagine if you had that power and there was only one obsticles in front of you, then there is only one way you could potentially use that power, however if there are multiple different routes and ways to get to the end, then you can be creative on how you want to use that power or what route you want to take to get to the end part.
Map and level ends when they reach the gate/ entrance of the enemy base! As is, just a title pop up and maybe a quick sequence to show the next gate is enough, but if scope allows it:
[Stretch goal] it would be great if there be an in-game cut scene in between the two areas to vindicate their arrival and to have some internal dialogue. This cut scene can be something as simple as the player whispering to himself "yes! I am finally here, now how do I get in?"
Or it could be from soldiers perspective of 'who is there? Oh it must have been the wind'
Levels that use this area
This is the part before the we get to the main gate, think of it as Mario 1-1
Connections to other areas
The Farm → Area before this one
The Military Base - Ground Floor → Area after this one
Since this game is Narratively mostly linear, the connections to the levels are usually one or two, the area before and / or After.
The Military Base - Ground Floor
The original map design in the pre-pre-production was like the following:
I was very Green when I drew this level, so naturally I think this level needs touching up and it feels very disconnected and unrealistic to the base.
Consider this as draft 0 instead of draft 1 of the map, the over all layout will probably stay the day since it's desired to be drained in a way that it represents the first letter in Farsi alphabet as it's the first letter to spell Iran in Farsi.
The goal of the maps is to have them set in a way that it spells Iran in Farsi by end of the game, having each letter or part of the letter be part of the narrative.
In case you missed it, Iran is spelled like the following: ایران
This already is the bigger chuck of the ا which is why it's so straightforward.
General description
This will be the First level after the tutorials
The idea behind this level is to introduce players to the mechanics of each enemy AI, there won't be much challenge to get past them so naturally there are only few collectibles for the player in this level. Probably 3 collectables in total. [as in "Medicine and Food"]
The rail way would be on the side of the map above. Its parallel to the (ا) and it's half complete, a great Stretch goal would be the more the player plays the game the further the rail is built, but that's just and extra pointless feature, literally the last stretch!
Their base has lower levels as their engineers were testing to see if they can dig to go under a mountain before they actually implement it on the rail ways.
It would be nice to have Easter eggs that are blueprints of the mountain dig side. Potentially as a secret collectables (Think doom toys in DOOM)
Collectables
Since it's the base level, the collectables in this level should be just Health Kit and Water Flask, would be grate if they were proc gen.
Enemy AI
In this area alone, there should be 4 mini areas. First 3 are introductionary to each AI and last one is area that contains a combination of all types!
Levels that use this area
Connections to other areas
From The Jungle
To TO-DO The Military Base - Medical Bay
The Mountain
Playable Characters
Kurosh / Kaveh 🧑🏻🤝🧑🏻 Characters
NPCs
The Translator
Kaveh friends / supporters
General description
In this section, the gameplay is different.
The player is now the elder brother, whom is more angry, more rough, but still has elements of his fathers personality, still have the leadership skills. This section is mostly focused on narrative advancement but this is also the part that the decision of the player could reflect the survivability of their other character!
In this section, the Character To-Do | Xerxes خشایار meets up with the To-Do | Translator, both of whom want to destroy the base of the military.
Translator has heard how they speak about locals and how they treat them, he also knows the locations that are vulnerable. He is also found someone on the inside who wants to return home, this is a horror in comparison to what the soldier thought it would be. So the soldier wants to desert without being cast as run away. The only way to do that is to explode the base so the officials abandon the mission. Which is why he is helping the rebels. This location is where they are meeting to discuss the details.
Inspiration and Visual Concepts
The purpose of using this sort of environment is to highlight how Iran isn't just desert and camels. By having this section, we are emphasising the multi ecological landscape of Iran.
As all models, it should be low poly but the visuals is to reflect an area that already has snowed and settled. it should have an overview to the over all map of the base section The Military Base - Ground Floor
It would be great if we could use the Captain America 1948 game as inspiration for the feel and type of environment we are looking for in this section.
Look at the background in this scene from the trailer ^
Levels that use this area
Which is when they make a deal and start to set the explosions
Which is when the explosions take place and elder brother finds out his younger brother is in the base that he just blew up... Hence the regret!
Connections to other areas
No, but look at To-Do | Xerxes خشایار and To-Do | Translator for character connections
And Level 7: The Regret (.) as well as Level 3: The Ammunition (..) for level connections
Metaphorical Connection
As each level is representative of different parts and letters of the word Iran in Farsi, the parts that focuses on this area are Ammunition which is a representation of the double dots which is commonly written as a straight line in hand writing style ( - ) so in that level the player should be able to move around in a straight line a bit more, giving them the option of exploration and such
Where as in the Regret level, it's representing the single dot ( . ) Which is why they have far less room to move as playable area and mostly is to focus on the map of the base, just over view over the other map to observe the explosion.
For more information on the layout of the levels, visit 🏰 Levels [To-Do]