wilbler park

i've been inspired to write about my game listening to clyde's podcast where he and chrissy talk about wilbler park and a few other games: https://twitter.com/cafefiction/status/565721140036128771

excuse my english

Wilbler Park is a game where one can look at the spaces they are chucked in with a pair of binoculars. I wanted the game to be about the sounds you hear around you, and observing distant things with the binoculars, and to create the feeling that the game isn't really about the player. there's usually quite little amount of objects in the box scenes you are contained in, and often there is more that appears to be going on outside these areas. I was interested in the idea that while you may feel alone in the game, there is constant suggestion of activity beyond the player. the player isn't really apart of anything going on, but can observe these things happening.

I was also interested in creating a hunting game without the hunting. I enjoy the idea of being able to zoom in and look at things closely with a sniper rifle or binoculars in games like Carnivores. for me the zooming in to get a closer look seems like enough interactivity with the world. this was also an idea in Hernhand, but without the zooming in. The animals you saw in the background of the first area were part of this idea. Wilbler Park features birds and smaller scale life (still cubes with images) to observe.

The starry skies were an exciting part of the game to make. at first I felt like this was going to be the big part of the game, where the binoculars could be used the most. I guess it is, but the busy sky doesn't continue on so much into the second half of the game. I was partly getting sick of having a black sky and not many colours, so I ended up making the desert and thought of  having the time of day progress to some kind of morning and mid-day. so this stopped me feeling swamped in a lonely midnight walk home feeling the whole time while making the game. I also liked the opportunity I had with this to change the style of sounds for the desert area to slightly more quick and zippy bright and sunny blue sky associated sounds. I do enjoy the contrast i think I managed with the day and night.

a lot of the areas in the game went through a number of changes. after I decided to put in a kind of overcast sky into the city area, I thought it looked good and went through adding stormy clouds in other areas which completely changed the vibe of each area which were originally all clear black with stars. the traffic/city scape area after the candle room used to be much bigger and had very tall buildings, a lot more traffic which was more distant and star warsy, but I thought about it and realised I wanted it to look less dramatic and have it smaller and more obviously diorama scale. I also went around and changed a number of wall textures, which used to be images of landscape drawings, to images I had intended to be for an eyeball you would find behind a building. the eyeball walls are now the common white walls you see in the first few areas. this made a number of the spaces feel more solid and cardboardy + cleaner which I enjoyed looking at. So making the game feel like a diorama was intentional, which was also inspired by backgrounds in other 3D games, like flat tree barriers to stop the player from getting out of the level.

some games have noticeable background activity going on beyond where the player can reach, I really liked this idea and the idea of trying to escape the game and get out into the background diorama. People seem to like doing this a lot and filming their attempts at escaping into game backgrounds on youtube, and they seem to be really satisfied by doing it which is interesting considering the games don't function properly where you aren't supposed to be, and textures go all glitchy and ugly. it's interesting how this becomes an exciting achievement for players, but then downloading an indie game specifically based on the horrible background areas of games will probably be dismissed and ignored by the same people because, maybe because there is no underlying conventional game with fun gameplay? there was no challenge to escape into and reach this horrible place? it's been an influence to Wilbler PARk and many of my other games.

I think Wilbler Park is somehow danker and more eerie than Hernhand, it has a more realistic feeling to me and is more lonely. hernhand seems more playful or something, more like a quick scribble and I like how a lot of Hernhand is partly hidden/not easy to reach unless you spend some time there. I thought I should make something more accessible and easy to get through, give the player a path to follow like in Bernband. but I also feel like it's a bit dry and bare, reminds me of sawdust or something, even though there is a lot more detail with amount of objects and drawings than Hernhand, the style of Hernandez is brighter and more enjoyable for me I think. Wilbler park feels a bit depressing or too lonely, possibly too much gray.