"Douse" Game 

Douse is the name of a student made game created by myself and the rest of Team Terrabyte at DigiPen Institute of Technology. Douse is a 2D Poetic Experience Plat-former that competed at Sense of Wonder Night '12 in Tokyo, Japan. I worked as the team's only game designer, and assisted with concept art as seen in the sketches below. The rest of the team was comprised of three programmers and one artist; Amanda Skibeness, Ryder Hanson, Bryce Nelson, and Constance Chen. Douse was a game we worked on outside of our normal academic studies, and despite the lack of time we had to devote to the project we made a game we could all be proud of.  

Design Notes:

· Explore through the power of growth! Douse can use his power to grow plants; some can’t be used as platforms while others can, encouraging the player to explore using the core game mechanic.

· Douse is a simple story everyone knows, getting stranded or lost and having to find your way back home. It’s relatable, which is weird because you’re playing as a rain drop. People see drops of rain all the time, millions of them, and no one would ever think to look twice at a single drop of rain. I made a connection between the billions of rain drops I've seen throughout my life here in the Pacific Northwest, and the billions of people living on the Earth. I thought about the “life” of a rain drop and what it would be like if an individual drop of rain had a soul, as well as cognitive thought. I walked through the forest near my home in Seattle, trying to look through the eyes of “Douse,” I suddenly saw the forest to be a beautiful but scary place with a history as deep as the roots of a tree.

· The story we as a team WANTED to tell never made it into the game due to time constraints, however we all felt that the story we NEEDED to tell did. Below are a few stretch goals that never made it into the game but might be worth mentioning to understand the complete design of the game. 

Stretch Goals:

A giant forest elemental “Guide” archetype, which will occasionally help the player out in a tough spot and drop some “lore” knowledge on the player about the history of the forest etc. For the design of the character, I was inspired by the idea of roots and foliage being part of his body, but also covering and hiding  portions of his face and body, from natural growth. My original idea for the character was a mallard humanoid who dressed himself in foliage, I evolved it during the design process but you can still see that the head resembles a mallard somewhat. I wanted to take the character in an elemental direction, his body grows roots and foliage like hair, hiding the creatures true form in most respects. In the story, the guide known as "Stormking" shown below is the last of the forest elementals who defended the world tree against the Destroyer. Stormking has the power to call a powerful storm to fight threats like forest fires, as well as the ability to bond with trees and travel between connected trees through their roots. 

An updated character model for the player controlled character “Douse,” completed with animations. The version of Douse that made it into the game was originally designed as a placeholder, the polished version below is a version I made after thinking about how the character uses his abilities and how he interacts with the environment. I wanted Douse to feel less like a cartoon, eliminating his rather silly legs and feet, and giving him a way to move and jump that is closer to how water actually acts. I thought of his base being the droplet orb and the rest of his body compresses (or decompresses) around it but always having it be his center of gravity. Instead of having no arms and a bobble-like head, I envisioned him with a smaller head and a single slingshot like arm to throw water at potential foes. I wanted his weapon to serve a double purpose, so I thought of having the arm serve as a temporary hook to grab onto an edge, shortly after hooking Douse's weight would cause gravity to pull him down separating the arm from the torso but allowing him to swing to safety if the player acts and thinks fast. 

A giant shape-shifting snake elemental “Destroyer” archetype, which will occasionally be hidden within the forest itself and attack the player in relation to the progression of the overall story. When I designed this character, I knew EXACTLY what I wanted from the get go. I envisioned a primal elemental snake that crawled its way up from the underworld, aka the "snake pit" in traditional lore surrounding the world tree "Yggdrasil." When I first got the idea for the character I pictured a snake that would adapt its body to whatever element it was touching; stealing the properties of water, air, earth, fire, wood etc. The idea was that this snake known as "the Destroyer," can hide in plain sight and strike when you least expect it, adding constant yet invisible danger for the player. Further in conception, I decided to make the type or species of snake change depending on what element it was adapting to, for example if it was wrapped around the branch of a burning tree then it might be a king cobra with a flame wreath hood.  

A small cloud sprite “Explorer” archetype, which once the player saves and/or releases will occasionally point out a hidden passage or item that is tangential from the main story path. I had a lot of fun creating this character, I was sitting outside at a park with my friend and he was pressuring me to draw something cool in my sketchbook. I told him I had an idea for a "cloud elemental" kind of character although I felt the concept wasn't serious enough and might be seen as too silly. The way I pitched it to him was, "it's like if the Pillsbury Dough Boy went camping but got lost and tragically died in the woods and became a ghost." The reaction I got was unexpectedly positive so I was forced to whip up the quick sketches below to fully illustrate the idea. I knew making the cloud sprite look like some kind of hiker/explorer outdoors-man type would better illustrate the archetype as well as fit the motif of the story. I gave him a big hat with what looks like a pin or crest at the top because I like to think that he belongs/belonged to some secret "explorers guild" that was active in the forest the story takes place. We as a team never decided on what a cloud sprite is or where they come from, but I wanted to think that cloud sprites are simply what happens to rain spites after death, rather fitting I'd say. 

The “Lore” elements of the story, giving more depth to the new world Douse has found himself lost in. These lore elements are unfolded in three ways; the Guide’s stories, discovery of carvings by the player, and the environment itself. There is too much story to fit in such a small outlet so I wont bother, but I will write the prologue I created below, enjoy. 

Prologue

*Douse illuminates his body, hieroglyphics react to the light and begin to move, they tell the tale about a World Tree that reached the heavens.* The World Tree's roots reached deep into the underworld, also known as “the snake pit.” Long ago, one defiant snake escaped from the pit. This snake launched a vicious assault on the World Tree, burning it to the ground with his army of fire elementals and sprites. While they danced victoriously in the ashes, an army of forest elementals, led by the great mountain spirit, Lord Rainier, moved against them. The snake, which hence forth was called “the Destroyer,” was defeated along with his army. Rainier’s wife, Lady Helena, was killed by the Destroyer during the battle. Lord Rainier imprisoned the snake within the great mountain of his namesake, and stood as guard of its prison. The loss of his wife devastated Rainier, and over time drove him to become insane, eventually leading to his demise. Many forest elementals were killed trying to stop the flames from spreading across the region. In the ashes of the World Tree, a special seed was found by a young forest elemental named Stormking. Stormking gave the seed to the elder elementals who took root around the seed and created a protective sanctuary in hopes that the seed might one day be reborn into a second World Tree. Years after the battle, remnants of the Destroyer’s army ignite small forest fires in the area surrounding the great mountain, waiting for their master's return.