Embedded Files
"Regretting is one thing, but changing the other."
The Other Side started in my first semester at the HTW, where I first thought of a game concept for a 3rd Person Action Adventure in context of the task to design a main character for a game.
In the 3rd Semester I picked this concept up again for the production design course I was working on. For this course I produced a collection of artpieces meant as design concepts for ingame objects.
And my journey through this imagined world is not yet over, as I produced a short story about the main character in early 2023 and am still bursting at the seams with ideas for this game concept.
I will continue bringing this world to life in various ways.
Content warning: mention of suicide, pandemic/sickness
and oppressive government
and oppressive government
In a time far in the future, on a planet far away, live the decendants of the now destroyed earth. On this planet, society has reverted to a strictly religious form of society, not much unlike society of the middle ages.
As a pandemic sweeps through the city, all subjects with even little medical training are called to enlist as a kind of "plague doctors". Among them is Corvian Catic, the protagonist of the game, who until now has lived purely for his own gain.
The increasing number of patients soon overwhelm him, causing him to rethink his principles.
Looking back on his miserably led life with his new gained conscience, he falls into despair and sees no way out but by committing suicide.
However, instead of going to the afterlife and finding peace, as he had hoped, he somehow ends up as a guide for the souls of the dead at the Inbetween. A world between the World of the Living and the Beyond.
Most of the asstes that came to life through the production design course are objects that would exist in the World of the Living, so during Corvians lifetime.
This is what the recruitment letter could have looked like.
It is not really recruiting doctors but more actively forcing people into the role.
You can assume that the government of this city is rather oppressive, besides being heavily overwhelmed with the situation themselves.
For this sign I imagined a quest, where Corvian has to help a soul that is restless and can't move on to the Beyond yet.
Corvian would have to travel through one of the ground windows to return to the world of the living temporarily and find and deliver a piece of jewelry in time.
Through quests of this type he would also slowly regain memories to figure out why he became a guide for the souls of the dead and how to retire to the Beyond himself.
Recruited doctors would sometimes be in charge of office duty. That consisted less of paperwork and more of driving around the city, trying to appear as if there was hope - as if there was a way to cure the sickness.
In actuality these doctors offices would barely be able to cope with the number of patients and could only offer remedys that would have a placebo effect at best.
These carriages are battery driven. A chemical reaction in the glass-tank on the roof produces energy. In the front there is a steering wheel and a break lever.
This asset is one that Corivan gets after he arrives at the Inbetween and also one of the main tools, the player character can use .
It is a whip that serves as a weapon against rotten souls, that can be found in the outskirts of the Inbetween, but sometimes wander towards the center and pose a threat to the roaming souls.
At will the whip can turn into a staff, that then serves as a light source through the crystal at the end of the whip-handle.
Every recruited doctor got a doctors-kit to use for their work.
It contained a pair of gloves, various mass-produced metal tools and a bag to store all of it.
Medical procedures and therefore the medical tools resemble those of the middle ages very much, as scientific progress had been blamed to have caused the downfall of the Old World and why humans had to resettle to a new planet.
This is a possible object for one of the quests that would lead Corvian back to the World of the Living temporarily.
It is a little statue, meant as a decor piece for tables or mantels. It depicts the god Abraxas of the religion that is predominant on this planet.
Abraxas embodies unity and does not divide between good and evil. They are believed to rule not only over this one planet, but the entire universe and all other gods, like the Christian god that was believed to rule over the Old World.
Project info
Project type
Individual work
Time frame
3rd semester: Oct 2021- Feb 2022,
~150 hours
And continuously working on it.
Software
Photoshop, Miro
My tasks and learnings
Drawing and photo editing in Photoshop, time management, visual research, worldbuilding, character design, writing, game design (conceptual)
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse