Blast to the Past

In the first room, you are just walking around in present time. you meet Cattington and he asks you to help him on his quest to fix his Time Machine. 

The second room is the lab where the time machine is located. this is the jumping off block for the story. this is where you first travel through time. 

The third room is the wild west! the first stop in our time travel! This is where we begin looking for the essential items for our quest.

The fourth room is the medieval castle where we find Cattington and continue on our quest. 

The fifth room is the lab again! however the Time Machine is about to explode! we have to find the last item to help save the day!

Mcloud describes abstraction as stripping something down to its meaning (Pg. 30). I tried to use this concept very generously because I am by no means an artist and had a lot of trouble trying to design all of my items, sprites, and the avatar. One item I created was a gear. it is a very simple version of a gear but I think it looks enough like a gear for the player to understand. The Wrench also looks kind of rough but it is enough to communicate the meaning.

On page 86, Scott describes the space between comics as the gutter. we can't use the space to tell the reader what happens in between, but we can insinuate. In my game, I used a wave transitional effect to help the player understand that we were leaving the present. this transition helps with the flow and beats of the story. Or by giving the player specific directions to the transitional points throughout the game, it was implied that the exit would lead them further into the story world. 

"Conditioned as we are to read left-to-right and up-to-down, a mischievous cartoonist can play a number of tricks on us." (pg. 105) 

Scott touches on the fact that it's okay to break the mold if it works! The linear way of storytelling is not always the best way to tell every story.