Back in Time!

Artists Statement 

1.    The story begins in the main room where you gather information from both a cat and a robot and randomly going back in time. You pick up your first remote to travel.

2.    In the second room you go back in time and find yourself in the Jurassic era. You talk to both a caveman and another cat to figure out where you are and figure out what kind of journey you are about to go on. There is also an X that gives you a clue about what to do next, you are also required to pick up a key to go to the next room.

3.    In the third room you go into the skull room and venture the scary skull. In this room you talk to a dinosaur bird that tells you to go to talk to the disco dino. The disco dino is looking for his bone. After finding the bone give it back to the disco dino and then get your next clue from the X.

4.    In the fourth room there is a giant dinosaur. While the room is somewhat an in-between room it does not play a lot to the story line but adds an aesthetic to the story. You are told from the jumping man to go find the other remote and talk to the trees on how to get back home. There are also a couple visual sprites and items that are just there but don’t play a role in furthering the story.

5.    In the fifth room you enter the tree room which is somewhat of an empty room. You then talk to the tree which gives you the ability to give both of the remotes to him to try and go home.

6.    In the fifth room you find out when you tried to go home you didn’t go far enough. You end up in ancient Greece at the Parthenon and are told so by the cat. You also can pick up pants so when you get back to the end you have an outfit to remember the adventure.

7.    In the end you get cake and are thanked and congratulated for going on the adventure. It is identical to the first room, so it looks like you went back to the same place.

I used McCloud’s concept of transition, abstraction and timeframe in many ways throughout the Bitsy game. I used each in many different ways and throughout and while many are immediately very visible some you have to search for in the game which gives it an adventure type theme.

As for abstraction the room with the dinosaur are an excellent example of this. While it looks like a dinosaur it is a functional environment that the player can move around and explore in. This was also obvious within the skull and jungle room. The transitions were also a huge part. I wanted to player to feel like he was going through several phases and going through a jungle, then giant skull and then the dinosaur I feel it represented where in time the player traveled back to. Even when they’re in ancient Greece and the beginning and ending room it is obvious where the payer is. By adding these details, the transitions make it easier and furthermore the tunnel transitions and fading transitions help a lot as well. I feel the timeframe is represented better than both of the other details. Again, the timeframe is given away by the graphics within the room and even the sprites give it away. By having characters that fit the timeframe it also helps tell where in time the player is.

                  Furthermore, after watching the theme park videos and reading I believe it helped me tremendously. I believe watching the videos helped me learn how to drag the players eyes from one place to another and that is done consistently throughout the game. From adding pathways like the theme parks had the player is able to follow the path from one place to another, except in my game the player is picking up clues and talking to sprites on how to get home and developing the story line will doing so. As for the ride themselves there are situations where the roller coaster my force the rider to see something and I need the same as stated before with the big rooms that represented one object. The best example of this that is represented well within the story is either the skull or dinosaur which is fun to look at and it’s the first thing you see when you enter the room. The last thing that is worth mentioning like many rides that we saw the story ends up in the same place that it started.