One of the aspects of design I've moved onto now has been that of building the environments for Asunder- not just the raw tilesets, backdrops and ambient effects, but the themes behind each 'world'. The game is going to be largely divided into three distinct themes, intertwined with each other, so while there may be "three wings with three dungeons", the game will jump from one to another and mix and match mechanics as needed. The three main 'worlds' will be the Past, Present and Future. I should stress- this isn't a dark/light world mechanic where theres three identical overworlds, but instead an ad-hoc approach where most areas are specific to one wing, but some might fade between others and overlap and so on.
One of the integral ways to identify each world is that there is a strong association with colors. There are three primary colors in the game; White for the Past, Blue for the Present, Red for the Future. There is also a theme of green, for Outsiders, but more on that later. The environments of each world will reflect these colors strongly in some areas, and it can be seen in the mechanics of different enemies and creatures and effects. When a monster attacks you by travelling backwards in time, it emits a white nova and flashes white. When you rewind an enemy through time, it trails a white silhouette. When you speed up or slow down time, the game fades to blue- and when an object is thrust into the future, to reappear in a few seconds, it will let out a red flash where it was. There are also secondary colors for each world- a purple subtheme for the future, a white subtheme for the present, and a green subtheme for the past- but those will be much less pronounced.
So on to each world;
The Future
The future is a very barren, rocky moonscape of floating continents and islands whirling through a void. The landscape is very alien, with jetting thrust through the ground, asteroids and space dust slowly orbiting through the background, and a very twisted, ruptured gravity that contorts around all sides of the landmasses- there is no up or down. Flora and fauna are sparse and often subdued purple vines and shrubs with bizarre geometry, though there are also brightly colored, almost poisonous plants and creatures with nonsensical eyeball placement and lack of conventional features like arms, legs, faces, skin, etc.
The Past
The past is a more diverse set of rich, oversized forest and field, with a much more orderly, 'normal' layout- up is up, down is down, and where gravity is distorted, its more a result of magic or odd buildings than the landscape. There is water, cliffs, and castles, leading to a dungeons with a strong emphasis on whirring traps and obstacles. Creatures here are more mythological and classical- skeletons, minotaurs, goatmen, hulking suits of armor, etc.
The Present
The present is the most wildly unstable area of the game- where time diverges from one side of a cataclysmic event to the other. On one half is a more tranquil, advanced technological culture, and on the other is blasted ruins with robots crawling over them in a wasteland. Individual areas will have very unstable time and gravity effects, most divorced from reality. Areas where walking from one side to another might pass a few centuries of development, or time stops and gos like a tide.
I've been working hard on getting content done for each area, and I've mostly tackled the creatures of the past and future so far, and the flora, tilesets and backgrounds for the future. So with that, I thought I'd put up a little preview of three different plant-enemies I worked on last week; there are only a few of the many more I've gotten done so far. Gives you a bit more of a feel for what one environment is supposed to look like.
Oh hey, thanks! They're meant to be separate themed worlds of the game, not necessarily mechanics. I've got functions that let you zip from one to another as part of a puzzle or whatnot, but primarily they'd just be three disparately themed environments. Like instead of doing an 'ice world, fire world, shadow world'.
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