Figment Dev Blog #5 - How to Design a Mind

Hey!

Some weeks ago you were able to see our Lead Game Designer, Jonas Byrresen, in its natural habitat. As we need to complete this video with an article, we want to use this opportunity to present the game setting and structure.

First and foremost: why make a game inside a person’s mind? We need to go a few years back to answer this question, when the team was working on Back to Bed. One feedback came back a lot: Players really enjoyed the surreal mix of dream and reality from the game, but they wanted to explore that kind of setting even more, instead of just going through a series of fixed level.

So the team wanted to take the setting concept from Back to Bed to the next step and create a universe for the player to explore. One possibility would have been to explore the consequences of dreams, their specific meaning, by getting more in touch with the real world. Why was Bob dreaming of escaping his office? Was it a thirst for adventure, or a stressful job he needed to escape? This could have been a narrative to take on, but the team thought they could find a more interesting one by exploring deeper into the subconsciousness. They wanted to explore “the other side”, or more precisely where dreams are created. The question thus transformed from “what do people dream of and why?” to “where dreams comes from, and what might that place look like?”. That meant that the team had to take a deep dive into the subconscious mind.

In a previous blog article, Jonas told you about the main concept behind Figment: exploring one person’s mind, its one-of-a-kind construction and expression. The following paragraph is a summary of the linked article, feel free to skip it if it’s still fresh in your mind!

Even if we all share common traits and basic brain structures (you know, the logical left brain and creative right brain everyone talks about), our individual life experiences shape it in many different ways. For example, two brothers and sisters won’t have the same mind-landscape, even if they share identical traits and history. Even if it was through well-known “mind archetypes”, allowing people to link it to their own minds, the team decided to depict a unique character’s mind (as in the movie “Inside Out” for example). What would be in this precise mind then?

The team wanted to create a complete representation of the mind and thought it would be best to do several environment, each with their own meaning. Let’s go through them one by one.

Following the classical logical left/creative-right segmentation of the mind, the team started working on Freedom Isles. You may have guessed from the name that this is the creative, right-brain part of the mind. It was one of the easiest to imagine. The few rules to design this place were to give it a lot of space and make it green and lively, through visuals and sounds. It was decided, to reinforce the mood, to make it bright, as if it was always noon there. Here are some concept arts of the place:

Now that the right-brain was made, it was time to take care of the left part, often referred to as the logical part. This one was more difficult. The team’s first impulse was to design a “bland”, “cold” place, made of boxes and cubes without rich or vivid colors, to emphasize the “logic” in it. But this didn’t feel right for them. The goal was not to make a pure representation of logic but create connected places, all existing in the same mind that fitted with and supported each other. Going into a “pure logic” representation disconnected this location from Freedom Isles. They decided, to find more inspiration, to stir it towards a “problem solving” landscape. This part of the mind would be depicted as a factory workshop, full of steam and cogs constantly working to solve problems and find solutions to daily matters (how do I fill this excel cell? What is the best bulk-buy offer today? etc).

Another big question was the “mood” and lights of this place. It couldn’t look as bright as Freedom Isles. The team brainstormed then found inspiration in “hard worker cliches”, such as working through the night with candle lights (or screen light for us game developers), and decided to set this logical world at sunset. With all those decisions, Clockwork Town could finally be part of the character’s mind while having its own particularities.

Another part of the mind called the Depths was also conceptualised at an early stage. It was supposed to host the most unrestrained subconscious mechanisms and characters. After a while, Jonas felt it didn’t add anything meaningful to the game universe, so some of the best ideas were salvaged and it was removed. Here are the few remaining traces of its conception:

The team also needed an area to tie all of this together. Connecting these different environments meaningfully was mandatory to show the player that the characters, events and locations were all part of a large connected worlds, and not a simple string of levels. After some reflections, they decided to make a special world, close to the consciousness, linking all the different parts of the mind in one place. The team then thought this new place could operate as some kind of center for the mind’s deeper personality, where the voices we hear in our head lives in their own houses. Some of the voices living there could be for example the voice of reason, telling us to go early to bed, or the voice of shame, telling us not to eat the last piece of cake.

And so what we refer to as the “hub” or “hub town” was born. It was imagined as a small village, inspired by the personality of the mind: a small quaint cozy village, a bit boring, but still very surreal. Here the voices live in small box houses, each of them being able to send their messages into the conscious mind via gateway leading up from here.

Lastly the team wanted to explore the impact of our day-to-day life on our subconscious. The idea is that parts of our subconscious change depending on daily events and our newest experiences. The mind will “absorb” and use recent images in thoughts and dreams.

Here is an anecdote, courtesy of Jonas, to give you a concrete example: some years ago, he played to a Pokemon game with some friends until late in the night, when he was supposed to get up really early the following day. Once he went to sleep, his entire night was full of nightmares in which Pokemon came and deactivated his alarm, forcing him to wake up (or dream of waking up) and check that everything was in order. You may not have had this kind of unpleasant night, but I’m sure you have similar anecdotes to tell.

The team decided to use this concept to describe the area closest to the upper mind, namely the pathway between the subconsciousness and the consciousness, which lies beyond the aforementioned gateway. This is a place that will separate the colorful and surreal world where dreams are made, with the upper part where all the impressions and experiences slowly trickle down.

But you’ll have to explore the game yourself to discover it!

We hope you liked this sample of Figment. As always, you can subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook or Twitter to have all the latest updates about our game. See you soon!

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