Maybe it would be a good idea to even shorten the themes down from escapsim in the forms of

Chpt 1. Fucked Up and Sober

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Chpt 2. Romance and Porn

Chpt 3. Heaven and Hell

To just chpt2, or simply a short satire/exploration of the beauty and awfulness of escapism in the sense of video game adventure narrative.

So far my game is looking to definitely be an adventure game.

My video game is about…. Escapism!

I don’t know how I didn’t realize it before. The thesis: Escapism is a beautiful and dangerous thing. The reason being because escapsim is a way for us to tap a part of our ID. And the ID, is a beautiful and dangerous thing.

Idi, the final boss of the game, is destroying the fantasy world Alia gets warped to.

The fox eating at the mouse’s carcass is beautiful because it’s a representation of the natural cycle of life and death. The brother being drafted to war is tragic and disgusting because it is a human representation of death.

Both the real and mirror world are inside of a fantasy world that Alia gets transported to. However the Real world must represent the realisim of the themes and the mirror world represents the escapism of the themes. The ultimate idea is that by playing through the game, although the mirror world is this fantastical place that has no idea it is connected to the real world. The Mirror world affects the real world in ways that people just don’t understand.

The sub-themes of escapsim, aka. the levels of the game go as follows.

Chpt1. Drugs

Chpt2. Romance

Chpt3. Spirituality

All forms of escapism. Drugs, easy. Life is boring, smoke up and things are interesting, or unihibited. I eat food and am horny because my ID likes that. The reprecussion is of course addicition and health problems.

These will be explored in way that ultimately will show the beauty of escapsim, but the danger of it. Which will also act to show the beauty of the ID, natural desire, animalisticness, and the danger of it.

This needs to be explored better, and this is a really sloppy post. But I must be somewhere and I wanted to write this down before I forgot. Hopefully I don’t come back to it and second guess myself and say wow I’m an idiot back to the drawing board.

Incorporate crazy Radio Lab special on fire flies that form in groups and blink their lights in sync. Maybe even use that awesome audio as an homage.

I think it might be a cool idea to have a very non-digital sound to the game. IE: Minimalist Acoustic guitar, blowing on bottles, whisteling, clapping, chanting, etc. just an idea.

In the final chapter of the game the player will be sent through a whirlwind of crazyness Kojima style. The idea is to really enforce the abitrary nature of the purposelessness of video games and the absurdity of human’s necissity to find an answer and a purpose to life.

So that being said a quick note to self as a mechanic to add to the last level:

The player warps to the mirror world but is sent through an ___ effect (don’t know the name, but the effect where one put up a mirror and there’s a mirror behind them creating an infinite series of reflections.) This then sends the player through a crazy super fast series of warps where they end up on an atom of the scene they warped from. They must then traverse atoms, jumping from electron to electron to moving proton etc. Until they finally reach the portal at the nucleus. They are then transported to the same scene where when they warp the get shot outward this time bigger and bigger, planet to galaxy to solar system, to the end of the universe where they are essentially greeted by a humorous take on “god” or the higher being and funny existential banter ensues.

It didn’t occur to me how much of an issue the camera will be in my game. At first I was thinking of having the camera be 3rd person shooter style with constant control over the camera and it would zoom in when it collides with things.

However after looking at several well praised platformers I think the best stratregy for camera would be to generally use a camera that follows behind the player and then smoothly moves into certain places depending on the room or puzzle. If the camera isn’t in one of these special locations the player can rotate the camera withh the second joystick.

Which brings me to an important point: how to integrate a game controller with Unity. Hopefully not too hard.

The big turtle creature you see in the top banner.

Let’s try to get at the heart of what Idi means to the game. Starting with his name, Idi, is a very unoriginal extension of the word Id, as in the third counterpart to Freud’s Ego and Superego.

Idi represents a more fleshed out version of what the fox does in the beginning scene. That is pure naturalistic desire. Idi is impuslive, one second happy, one second scared, the next he’s aggressive. It’s quite hard to figure out what is actually ever on Idi’s mind as he is distracted by the strangest things. Because he exists among the creatures of the world as a peer, everyone has great disdain for Idi. Either because they think he’s dumb, weird, brutish, or even because they’re jealous.

I think a good introduction to Idi would be that Alia is sent on a quest to kill Idi because he unknowingly wrecks the homes of the creatures of chapter 3. After an intense short battle I will try to reveal Idi’s true nature, and that is one of innoncence and as such hopefully create a level of empathy towards him.

Which bring me to another important note about Idi. Idi is gigantic. One of the biggest creatures in the game. This makes his nature that much more potent. He is very dangerous and destroys things without knowing. He has been forced to move way out of civilization so he doesn’t destroy anything more, and as so is very lonely.

So maybe a good way to reveal his nature is after battling Idi he goes “Rumpah! Well that was fun! I haven’t danced like that in forever! Thank you! Will you be my friend!? Oh please pelase please, I could use a friend so bad.” Alia will be confused and Idi will continue to jump around shaking the ground excited.

So after getting an introduction to his character this is when I hope to kick in the excitment and pure joy that is described in my History of Video Games class when describing the joy one gets from a headrush. Aka zero challenge all pleasure. Idi will let Alia jump on his back and all the sudden the player can traverse gaping mountains and have more power than ever before. Exciting music like when Karen O and the Kid’s track kicks in on the Wild Rumpus. The two will eventually fly way out on top of a plateu and the player will hopefully even be instructed to wildly spin their mouse or something extravagent to spin faster and faster with Idi until they reach a treshold and the two collapse like in the beginning scene. The music will settle, and the camera on Alia and Idi’s happy faces will pan.

After a lull Idi will talk, and instead of reflecting on the moment Idi will go “I’m hungry”. He will ask Alia for food. He will get up and notice there is nothing around. Idi will panic, and ask Alia to fix it fix it fix it! Then get desperate and attack Alia saying he will eat her. At this point the player will have to run around avoiding Idi untill they can find a portal and escape.

Anyways that ends my thoughts on Idi for now. He is an important character to the central theme of the game. That is the beauty and indifference of the purest naturalistic desire in contrast to the beauty and ugly of the socialized, civilized, human nature. Up until this point it’ll be pretty hammered in with many examples how much crap society has brought through social roles explore in chapter one, social expectation to be the best buisness fucker-over or the best pagent doll in chapter two, and now in chapter three after running through a world of those without romance and escapism or a mirror world with pure romance and escapism, it’ll, hopefully, be a breath of fresh air to come across Idi.

The beginning of my development blog for Mirror.