Land of the Northmen

1.     In the first room the player wakes up on the seashore and is unsure when and where they are.

2.     The player wanders into a village where they discover that they are somewhere in Scandinavia when the Norse people ruled over the land. The player is also urged to go and speak to the Jarl.

3.     The player finds the Jarl and speaks to him. This is when the player discovers the main conflict and is where the story begins.

4.     The player must talk to an NPC in order to get the gear needed to progress the story.

5.     The player encounters the hostile people of the world and must defeat them to progress

6.     The story reaches the climax when the player must fight and defeat the main villain of the story and retrieve the stolen artifact.

7.     The player must return back to room 3 in order to return the item and complete the game.

 

One of the main concepts from McCloud that I focused on was the concept of timeframes. In Land of the Northmen, I wanted to make sure that each room was distinct enough from the others and had distinct enough events within them to create the feeling that each room was its own moment in time and its own spot in space as to not draw confusion like there is in the panel discussed in pgs. 94-97. I did this by adding proper transitions whenever there were significant changes in time or place between the room and by making them unique enough to where each room is distinguishable from the other rooms. I also used a combination of the four main transition types to keep the story interesting but have enough closer that the player could easily follow the story and be able to understand what is going on. The transitions from room 1 to room 2 and from room 5 to room 6 are scene-to-scene transitions, so I used dialog in order to gain some added closure so the player can follow the direction of the story. The transition in and out of room 3 are subject-to-subject transitions that require the player to understand that the player is moving in and out of a building for that transition. Finally, the rest of the transitions are action-to-action as the rooms are all a part of the same scene but must move between rooms in order to conduct the various actions in the scene.  

 

I took quite a lot from the Disney Imagineering theme park videos and readings that I applied to my game, Land of the Northmen. One of the major things that I took away from those videos and readings was that every minute detail of my game needed to point back to the theme of my game, which was the adventure of a time traveler in Scandinavia when Norse people ruled the land. So, when I created the game, I wanted to not only be true and authentic to the Norse culture but also wanted to include elements and details that were recognizable to Norse culture, which is why I build the scenery as I did, beaches and forests, and that is why I also chose Odin to be the god that the village people worshipped as he is one of the most well-known Norge gods. The designs of the houses and the decorations in the Jarl’s dwelling are also details that I used to solidify the time and setting of the story. Another thing that I learned, specifically from the dark ride materials, is that when creating a game like the one I have created it is important to keep it short, simple, and to the point and only adding necessary details that will contribute to the creation of the world and to the development of the story.

The fastest speed run as of now is 19.88 seconds