Visuals : The colors as a vector of the meaning of the game

Hello everybody,

Because it’s the beginning of this blog, I would like to share with you some pictures of the first steps of our development. As you know, the game was originally created with the software Ren’Py. A very interesting tool to create visual novels. The aesthetics at this moment was pretty simple : already a cartoon style but a choice of three colors : white, grey and black.

The goal was to create an atmosphere with the story, the dialogs, of course, but also with these graphic elements. It’s so important to immerge the gamer since the beginning in your world and the choice of the colors could help with that. For us, it was a strange world without vivid colors that creates a feeling of uniformity.

Now, the choice is to use vivid colors but for the skin we continue to have a kind of grey to avoid the “pink” of the skin or a too realistic color for us because we want to respect the strangeness of the Kafka’s world. And, by the way, a brown filter will appear progressively and makes all the game look more and more sad as the mental health of the character is. So, we continue to use the colors as a vector of the meaning of the game but…differently.

Story – Why Kafka ?

Hello everybody,

For our (real) first post, we have decided to talk about the choice of Franz Kafka as principal topic for our first game.

I’ve visited, me, Alexis Hassler (alfoux), the city of Prague in last December. It was a great trip and one day I was at the Kafka’s museum. It was a shock. I discovered the power of Kafka’s work.

The idea of creating a video game is an old one for me. After having thinking, and writing several papers, about video games I’ve decided to do more and that’s why I’ve started to create my own game.

Kafka’s life is as interesting as his novels or short stories. His life was a constant struggle between his desire to become a famous writer and his obligation as an employee in an assurance enterprise. This link was ideal for me, as a writer and game designer, to give to players some interesting feelings and thoughts about the daily struggle of life.

When I returned from Prague, I’ve started to read again some novels and short stories written by Kafka as “In the Penal Colony” which is a really good one. Step by step, I understood that Kafka would help me to create a true psychological video game. A video game in which the player will see every consequence of his acts. When I say that, I mean consequences on the mental health of the character.

Just to finish, some pictures of the Kafka’s museum.