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The Looking Glass Railway + Asylum Patient Tags
🕑 Added 2019-05-08 02:12:17 +0000 UTCDear Insane Children,
Live Stream Info is down below! Don't miss it!
All aboard! We're taking a ride through Wonderland aboard the Looking Glass Railway.
Pictured above is Omri's updated render of Joey's original Wonderland Map for Asylum. Along with this image Omri sends a series of questions which will help us define important details regarding the layout and navigation of Wonderland in Asylum.
Let's go through these points and provide some feedback...
1. do we want 2 stations for each area, that is the Entrance and Exit? personally, i don't think we need that, i think for each area we should "open" the tracks to the next area, in that way the player will go to the edge of the map and come back, very exploratory. you won't be able to visit somewhere you didn't visit before.
Each area can have more than one station. And these don't need to be "entrance" and "exit" ... we might have "Depression Gardens" and "Vale of Tears" as stations both located in the area of "Depression." The order in which we access these or how we arrive at them... we'll have to decide as we flesh out the narrative and Alice's overarching journey. She might arrive in an area like Depression via some route other than the Railway - dropped off by Gryphon flying overhead, launched out of a circus cannon... endless possibilities.
For now, you can place a single station in each domain and we'll expand on these as needed.
2. Did i forget an area? can you think of something? "Vale of tears" can appear on Depression/ but places we already "know" but we don't have "wonderland woods" for example... where should it appear? or should it?
Yeah, we can define these but let's get the big pieces in place first. As for the big pieces... looks like they are all there. I am a bit concerned about the idea of our "hub" being in the 6th area and not visited (presumably) until pretty far into the game. We should kick this around a bit and think about how that will feel to the player. Maybe it's OK to leave out the hub until around the middle of the game?
3. Overall 9 large areas not including smaller areas like: "water areas" between Bargaining and Depression, (as Vale of tears can be the opening for Depression) but that place for instance doesn't have to have a station, but could.
9 large areas but there can be smaller stations within each area... depends on how big we make those areas. For the larger castle-type levels, perhaps there's a simple linear progression through from point A to B... so we only need a station at the start/end. For other, more open-world type areas, we might need multiple stations. Again, large chunks first, and then we can start thinking about this aspect of the layout.
4. Shock should have a station? do we even want people to re-visit there? Perhaps we need to conciser having Alice "Fall" from shock to Denial, like in the book. Having the Denial station at the edge of denial. I still don't understand how the Moon merges into the storyline but she should visit there after the circus theme.
Shock is special and I don't think we'll revisit it. In my mind, it's highly linear, likely to contain quite a lot of scripted/canned/cinematic moments.
5. i don't want the stations to be compared to Level select.
To avoid that, we'll need to make good use of repeated travel between the areas.
6. i think for now i have enough data to design each of the stations, as you said, they will be a building in an area, i think for each one there will be a puzzle in the theme of the area. the Hud will be grand but the rest of them will be smaller. we need a Tram pass, elements specific to opening the tracks and fixing them along the story.
Sounds about right!
What say you, Insane Children?
Sonny also sent over a rough draft of an interior shot of the Main Station. You can see the Mock Turtle keeping an eye on the scene. The building is constructed of books... and filled with normal humans? Hmmm... can't have that!
This is a good start but I think we want to capture a more cathedral-library-station type of feeling. I'll ask Sonny to think about how to revise this. And we'll also see Omri's version of this soon.
Omri also produced this exterior view of the Main Station as seen in the realm of Depression. This area contains the Toy Store (run by "Bumby" in an earlier form), the Vale of Tears, and perhaps a link to an underwater graveyard. Once the player accesses this area we'll be able to quickly re-visit other areas of the game. But we might want to think about a ticketing system which we can use to limit travel based on where we want the player to be and when.
As a way of prompting the player to get to the next area/mission in a timeline manner... the train station could be where we find a schedule of trains and hear announcements that certain trains are waiting for "Passenger A. Liddell" - a nice prompt to get on with it!
Shaping the World
This is an exciting step in the process of developing the structure and design of Asylum. It comes as a result of Omri organizing tasks and deliverables for our art and design team. With Omri, Alex, Joey, Norm, Sonny, and other artists contributing towards the Asylum Design Bible, it's important that tasks be properly distributed and scheduled. I've been doing my best to manage this process but find myself falling behind more and more - so it's great to have Omri on board helping with this!
Celebrating Our Insanity - Patron Reward!
A while back we sent out Inmate Certificates to our first ~500 Patrons. Now with over 3000 Patrons, I was thinking we should do something special to celebrate our little Asylum full of Insane Children.
We could do another Inmate Certificate... but I feel like "been there done that," plus we saw some of those cards get really bent up in the mail. So I had this idea...
We can produce individually numbered Patient Tags and mail them around the world to all of our Insane Children. The tags themselves don't cost much to manufacture but shipping, taxes, and fees make it so we can only offer these at the $15 Tier and above. ($14 is our COST on manufacturing, taxes, fees, and shipping (to the US) so this is as close to "free" as we can get!)
If you're already at $15 (or above) you'd get this automatically, without having to change a thing, BTW. Those of you at a tier lower than $15 could bump up for the month if you were interested. Anyway...
Do you all want to make this happen? We can do it this month if you're interested.
Let me know in the comments below! Yay!? Nay?!
Btw, I would love to have individual names on each tag - and that is technically possible - but it creates the nightmare of sorting through thousands of tags to find a name and attach it to a shipping label for that person. Based on experience we know this sort of thing would result in great sadness and possibly death. You don't want to kill me and Font Lord, do you?
Live Stream Fun Time With Font Lord and Stick Boy
Another week, another live stream! Join us at the regular time over on my YouTube Channel.
Hit THIS LINK to set a reminder and join the fun.
There will be prizes, Font Lord, Lulu, and more!
Be sure to get all your SUGGESTIONS and QUESTIONS into the comments below!
See you there!
From Shanghai with Choo Choo,
-American (and Loolooooo!)
Comments
Ways appreciate seeing the inner workings of how things like the world map get put together. Nice to see sonny pop in and delight us with some lovely artwork. Love and adore the inmate tag idea, I wouldn't want any murders to occur so definitely satisfied without individual names for them.
Wonderland Woods obviously brings to mind Out of the Woods, and the whole game is like entering and emerging from woods that get incredibly dense and dark at the centre. They could be associated with loss and peril alike. Bargaining, Depression and Testing all relate in some way, so it would feel right at that stage of the game, but Testing feels most right, as woods are potentially a place of trials, exciting, uncertain, gloomy and exhilarating
Love the dog tag idea!! If we can’t do names maybe a cool design on the other side?? It would just add to it.
I would love the tags!! However, shouldn't the inmate number be #2381 like on the bag? Doesn't make much sense to be 0000 when we already have an inmate number.
Gregor Hähnel
Named inmate tags would be awesome, but I about worry about data privacy issues (especially for european inmates [GDPR]). On the subject railway/fast- and backtravel I would prefer a late introduction of it, because Alice have to kind of sort her mind before she can rethink the previous steps.
I wish I had been here on time for a certificate 😩 !!!
Ah, the Carpenter makes a return? That would be awesome, I loved him <3
SUGGESTION: The way I see it, wouldn’t the moon be better going after shock? I can see the transition from denial to shock having many options. For example, the cannon in denial (if that is what’s decided on as it would be very scary and chaotic, as the circus grounds would presumably be very loud, busy and strange as well). Here, the cannon could be aimed at the moon but suddenly fall parallel to the ground, and send Alice right through the tent, across the circus yard and into her burning house with the door slamming shut behind her. This is just one example of a sudden and jolting transition. From there an objective can be completed where advice is given for Alice to focus on one distant and constant thing to calm down and give her guidance. Here she could choose the moon and start floating towards it (or to be cute, it could grow bunny ears, a fluffy tail and legs and make Alice struggle to catch it, such as with a train segment similar to a fox hunt just to push the theme of shock? There’s a lot you could do there). Then from the moon, where the rabbit helps guide her, she gains enough confidence to try bargaining! 😁 Sorry for the novel, I just want to explain my thoughts! Also, the only thing I would do to the the tag is add the Rutledge Asylum RA symbol to either the back of the tag if you have no plans for the back, or at the bottom and move the font up, or just make the font bigger? It looks just a touch too bare in my opinion, but otherwise I absolutely love it 😊
The tags are a great idea! Will there be an image (Cheshire maybe) or the Alice logo on the other side?
Cherrie Wu
I LOVE THE MAIN STATION ART AND WOULD LOVE IT AS A PRINT
Daniel Woda
Each train has a conductor. This function should have someone angry, destroyed by his/her character and actions. I dunno, somebody like David Jones from Pirates of the Carribean. Every chapter he or she would talk to Alice about things she encountered in completed chapter.
Kizu
tag is just awesome idea! )) About name on it... I think everyone can engrave it by himself if desired (there is just perfect place for the name under the number) ))
Lucas Severin
I'm liking the dog-tags, I'm raising my tier for the month
Hard yes on the patient ID tags! The image shown looks awesome!
I'd love it
Tag-idee ist richtig toll, und anstatt namen (auch wenns schön wäre) wäre eine tolle vollbild gravierung auf der rückseite mit der wahnsinnigen alice und cheshire cat toll
Summer Hinch
I love the patient tag idea!! That would be so cool ☺
Love the patient tags!
Absolutely yes to the patient tags please!!! 😀
Patient tags sound awesome!
Love love love the tag idea!!!!!! I'll never take it off lol!!!!
Sarah Heist
Tags are adorable Map system omg! QUESTION: did we ever decide on whether the rings would be in constant motion and stilled on completion or vice versa? Either? Neither? SUGGESTION: have an area(s) in the train station where some parts of the building explode either through events or by player action and pages fly everywhere. (Also i really like the sound of rustling pages) SUGGESTION: different animal species/ like how the mock turtle is different animals smashed together...but other randomized animals.
Yes please do the tags!! I was so upset when I missed the certificates. Also loving the map system!
Wendy Jaa
QUESTION: Who is Stick Boy? And where did the name Font Lord come from? I'm loving all the art and I'm very pleased with this new map. I think the tags would be wicked cool, even if you decide to not do names! I'm 100% on board with it!
Loving the tags
I love the dogtag idea! I was sad when I missed out on the certificate but this will make up for it! The station is look terrific and I can wait to see the final outcome. I'm horrible with building design, so that would be a flop for be to throw my hat in. If you need input on clothes though, I'll toss a ring and hope to hit the bottle.
I love bringing in a map similar to the style of the original game, ironic how I just rebooted up the game for another playthrough, for the train I'd love to see Mockturtle as the conductor, the inmate tags seem quite awesome but maybe an item more insane and relating more to inmates if possible but I'd raise my teir for it!
Chibi Tiger
I'm absolutely down for more swag.
Glad to see some new work from Sonny! ❤ I like the way the station is looking but I agree that it needs more flair. It's a lovely train station but it doesnt feel whimsical enough to be in Wonderland. And I would love the tag and I dont feel individual names would be necessary, too much of a hassle.
That patient tag sounds super cool and I’d totally pay for it. And I think the whole multiple stations on one subject thing sounds pretty cool too. It would be more to explore without being restricted to entrance/exit
