Having given some thought to my brainstormed ideas, and some peer discussion, I have decided to focus my core concept being built around this idea of the world lacking colour. This is to represent a point in my life where I felt at my lowest, and as I would walk around, the world would feel empty. I want to communicate this idea through using a bleak choice of colour, by stripping textures from objects and presenting them in a clean bare format. I feel the best choice to create this feeling of emptiness, is have a small open field, surrounded by a bunch of buildings that can not be entered inside of, while the user walks around a white space that has patches of blocks to represent a feeling of discomfort, and make them feel like the world is artificial, which was akin to how I felt as a teenager. Some of my visual references was looking at houses and architecture in Minecraft and looking at photos of the city outside my apartment to draw inspiration for the small interactive area.
For my interactive concepts I had a few ideas that have been brainstormed but need to be explored in terms of scope. I want to have a reoccurring interaction that the user will engage with that will change the atmosphere and mood of the environment. One instance is having a piano key play with each step the player character takes, and over the course of a couple of minutes, it will play an entire song. I have considered potentially building up to a highpoint to view everything, but I feel that will be anti-climactic for the bleak mood I am aiming for. The other ideas consist of having sound drown out or build based on the user interacting with objects around the environment to communicate a narrative around reflection and emotion. In realizing that there may be audio complexity and coding limitations for the scope of the project, I also came up with the idea that the user could interact with different cubes in the open environment that could gradually restore colour/textures to the objects around them, or, for instance, if they reached the high point of the environment, colour will be completely restored. To help in developing my ideas, I went into making a design document, which involved creating some concept art for the general thematic of my experience, a map, and the core elements that I want to utilise for my experience.
Lighting Up Your week 