The document provides details on the mood board and inspiration for an upcoming game project. It includes images and descriptions of games, books, films, monsters, characters, and backgrounds that will influence the design and story of the mental illness-themed game. The mood board conveys a dark, hopeless atmosphere using mainly dark colors and textures. It establishes three main characters that will explore different maps influenced by their mental illnesses portrayed as monsters. The mood board will serve as the foundation and structure for the overall project.

1. Initial Plans
Andrew Downes

2. Pre-proposal

3. Skills Audit

4. Skills Audit

5. Mood Board idea formation game
These two images are from two different complete games the one on the left is
called blasphemous it is a 2d side scroller platformer which is kind of a mixture
between dark souls and Castlevania. The one on the right is called dead cells is
also a 2d side scroller platformer which is kind of an exploration game the
closest thing to it is probably Sekiro.
These two images are of books on the left there is homer’ odyssey /
Ulysses which is filled with exploration and action of a lost ship at sea
which is a fantasy book which is filled with monsters. On the right the
book is called drawing for fantasy artists which has a lot of different
monster designs with in them which is where I got the idea for the mental
illnesses turning into monsters.
These two images are movies to
do with mental illness the one on
the left is called split and he has
dissociative identity disorder
(meaning split personality
disorder) which is where I got the
idea for actually having mental
illness as the enemy of my
project. On the right the film is
called Birdman the Main
character has another voice in his
head talking to him to do all sorts
of things.

6. Mood Board monsters game ( mental
illnesses)
All 3 of these images are monsters from Norse and Arabic mythology. The one on the left is called
Jormungandr which is from Norse mythology it is otherwise called the world serpent it is a sea serpent
that surrounds earth and midgard and goes in a circle which can grasp its own tail apparently when
Jormungadr releases its tail ragnarok will begin which technically means the end of the world. The one
in the middle is called Bahamut which is from Arabic mythology which was originally portrayed as a
whale or some sort of fish however though recently the mythical beast has turned into a dragon
however though its original purpose was to help the bull hold up the earth which is kind of like a sacred
symbol to them in Arabia. The one on the right is called a draugr which is another one from Norse
mythology they are technically zombies or walking dead however they usually stay in their graves
protecting buried treasure and if not they wreak havoc on living beings or torment people who
wronged them in their past life their powers include super strength the ability to increase their size and
weight on command and the ability to appear as vapor and swim through solid rocks.

7. Mood Board monsters game ( mental
illnesses)
All 3 of these images are also monsters from Gaelic and Norse mythology. The one on the
left is called a kelpie which is from Gaelic mythology which are shape shifting water spirits
who live in lochs they usually appear as horses and when they turn to a human they keep
their hooves making a connection between them and the devil to Christians of the time.
The one in the middle is called the Kraken which is from Norse and Greek mythology which
looks like a massive octopus it lives of off the coast of Norway and Greenland and terrorizes
passing sailors in movie and book depictions of the beast it is known to have sunk a lot of
ships however in real life it is a giant squid that can grow up to 15 meters in length. On the
right there is the wolf called Fenrir from Norse mythology it is foretold that Fenrir will kill
the god of gods Odin during Ragnarok the end of the world but is also foretold to be killed
during Ragnarok by Odin’s son called Vioarr. In other words Fenrir is a massive wolf god who
is the son of Loki the god of deceit and tricks.

8. Mood Board characters game
On the right there is a knight which is going to be one of my main characters who is going to
be the one suffering from anger issues so he is the one fighting and defending against the
monsters. In the middle there is a pauper who is going to be the one suffering from anxiety
he will be running away and defending himself from a monster. On the right is an old man or
could be a mage he is going to be the one suffering from depression and will be the one who
is trying to find and hunt the monster/monsters he gets.

9. Mood Board backgrounds game
On the right is a picture of a forest which I thought would be good for all of the characters to be making their way through
as there are many places to hide, run away and fight which fits the criteria of the mechanics I wanted also it can be very
scary when you get lost in a forest also it can be quite a luscious and nice background to look at. In the middle there is a
medieval city street I also thought that this would work well with all of the mechanics and criteria with the running fighting
and hiding a city can also be quite daunting when and if you get lost but it isn’t usually as nice to look at as a forest. On the
right is a castle which would only really be good for the hiding and running away as when it comes down to the fighting it
can be quite a small map and it won’t be as atmospheric as the forest or a city street and it isn’t really as scary as the other
two options but I think I might be able to use all of them as backgrounds if I have enough time when it comes down to the
production. With the knight in the forest, the pauper in the city streets and the old man sorcerer guy in the castle.

10. Mood Board

11. Mood Board

12. Mood Board Analysis general 5-9
How does your mood board inspire your project?
My mood board inspires my project because I already knew what I was going
to make before the start of the project and so what my mood board is doing is
just throwing everything together from my idea in my mind such as the main
characters are 3 friends a mage/ old man, a knight and a pauper they split up
and go to three separate maps the knight to the forest, the mage to the castle
and the pauper back to the streets they all have mental illnesses the knight
has anger issues, the pauper has anxiety and the mage has depression. These
mental illnesses gain a few physical traits as they perceived by the main
characters as monsters who are there to hunt or be hunted. So to answer my
mood board inspires me because it is already telling the story that I want it to.
Now all I have to do is expand on the story from its base (the mood board).
How will your mood board influence your final product?
• It will influence my Mood Board by being the backbone and structure as I
have pretty much told the story with my mood board

13. Mood board analysis 10
• On the mood board page 10 There are a lot of colour schemes three of them being made in
PowerPoint using the table to create them the process for those ones were to just use
colours that I would see a lot of in the settings I had set out being forests, city streets and
castles so there are a lot of greens, blues, yellows, greys and then there will be quite a bit of
use of black and white for the forests I will be using a mixture of dark blues and dark greens
as the whole game idea is for all the characters to be in darkness or to be in dark areas for
most of the game and as for the knight and the other characters I added colours for their
apparel for the darkness as well as some lighter colours to show the hope the more bad
things like they get attacked or something they start to become dimmer around the edges so
they fit in with the others as if they dissolved into a crowd. I’m getting off topic The dark
greens, browns and blues are going to go together for the forest as I am planning on maybe
having a stream run through parts of the forest . The dark yellows , browns and blues will go
together for both the city streets and the castle the yellow for thatching and maybe torches
and maybe for small parts of the characters the brown will be used for the timber and most
of the wooden parts of the game such as the woods and the blues will be in each and every
map as it will be light from the moon to make it feel even more desolate I chose mainly dark
colours to convey a sense of hopelessness and I will use some lighter colours for the main
characters to convey that they have hope and when they do something wrong multiple times
the hope starts to disband and become darker when the outline of the character reaches
black you have lost hope and thus lost the game.

14. Mood Board Analysis 11
• On the mood board page 11 there are a lot of textures to do with forests, woods, medieval
buildings, rocks and castles. The bark is going to be incredibly difficult to draw into my project as
the trees are going to be in the background and are going to be very dark and so I might have to
draw the bark in dark brown and the actual tree black and maybe have the occasional bit of moss
but the bit that will make it slightly easier is the fungus as seems as that will be lighter than most
bits of the tree and the background so it will be slightly dark grey or slightly lighter brown. The next
texture is of rocks and that will be the foundation for the castle as I am planning for it to be on a
cliff or some sort of edge and the castle will probably be in ruins and will have lots of partially
crumbled arches and destroyed walls leaving lots of places to hide and run I am also planning on
having the background being either the sea crashing up against the rocks or it’s going to be some
sort of oblivion with darkness maybe some stars or something just to make sure it doesn’t look
bland but yeah crumbled and destroyed objects in a game like this usually makes for quite an
interesting episode/ level. The next set of textures is for the medieval city the texture for the thatch
roof will be incredibly difficult as it is so fine the detail needed to be shown by this so it won’t
probably work if I try to make it as small as all of my other projects so far. So the only part of that
image I will be able to follow accurately will be the timber part of the houses with maybe a bit of
the white paste on the outside also that will be the grey part when I turn everything darker I might
even add a tinge of blue to it as well. For the church it will be easy as it will just be brick texture that
will be slightly different on each and every level and then there will be the usual arched windows
that are associated with stain glass in churches but I won’t be able to add any of the detail of the
stain glass though as you wouldn’t be able to see it in the dark unless there was light from the
moon. As for the mill it will be fairly similar to the church in the way of using the stones and bricks
also then there is the wooden beams to create turbines to catch the wind.

15. Key Influences
• https://dead-cells.com/
• The game is called Dead Cells it is about a slime which comes into contact with a corpse and takes
control of it fighting and exploring through the levels to gain weapons I don’t know whether or not
there is an ending to the game but I don’t think there is I think it is just level after level until you die
and then you lose everything and work back up to what you had previously and try to beat your
record. I thought this was a really cool idea I like the story of how you are playing as a slime and
take control of a dead body but really the best part about the game is the art style it looks fantastic
the fact at how it mostly looks underground or in a building and yet it somehow manages to pull off
an incredible background which seems to always have something happening in the background it
also seems to be colourful and vibrant but I am going to try and something fairly similar with the
background in the forest but just making everything a tad bit darker but as for the city scape and
the castle I think the most important part to take from this game is the level design and map also
how everything works to see whether it would be better to add some different mechanics to the
game. Like when it comes down to the lift I am already dithering on whether or not to have a puzzle
connected to the lift to use it and there are other such mechanics from this game I am planning on
using in my game which is the floor being able to break or fall out underneath the main character
and the final thing that I love about this game is the opening scene where the slime connects to the
dead body and somehow invigorates it with a new flame and as it says in the trailer death is not the
end which makes me feel like the dead body got a second chance to live so yeah I like the weird
concept of it.

16. Key Influences
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWufEJ1Ava0
• This game is called Hyper Light Drifter it is about the main character who
is a drifter and has an unspecified disease. The other interesting part of
the story is that the drifter is the only person to own technology which has
been long since lost in their world. This game leaves most things down to
interpretation. As you were probably going to pick up on, one of the plot
points I have pointed out already which is the unspecified disease could
easily link into what I am planning on doing with my game and as with
dead cells it has its own fantastic pixel art style I also like its fairly top
down view but mine will be a side scroller as for the art well they have
both some fantastic structural design as well as having some great rural
backgrounds and maps and because of how it is all laid out they don’t
have levels really just one long continuous story which is also another
thing I like about the game however as I said I ma going to be doing a 2d
side scroller but it does give me some interesting design ideas for ruins
and the sort.

17. Key Influences
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP8q5F6dFqQ
• This game is called Valiant Hearts it is about world war 1 it is a
fantastic game due to its story it has multiple different main
characters they all have highs and lows and the ending is very
emotional and moving. I plan to try and take the emotionality of
the story line and try to do something similar with my characters to
try and connect them emotionally to one another valiant hearts did
it so well because they had two different types of family war and
home family all of the war family died and one of the home
members died all of it was connected though because of the dog if
you saw the trailer which is the link at the top the dog is the voice
that is delivering the monologue and that is why it works so well.
There are some mechanics I like in the game which is the
collectibles, the things you can interact with and the puzzles, in my
project

18. Key Words
• Doomed
• Darkness
• Mythology
• Death
• Resurrection
• Struggle
• Breaking
• Endless cycle
• Midgard or Asgard

19. Key words explanation
• six of my key words are to do with depression and
mental illnesses, my three favourites are endless cycle,
Doomed and Death as they will be recurring quite a lot
throughout my project to describe the difficulties of
mental illness efficiently. Then the other four words are
to do with mythology actions and areas. Which are
Midgard, Asgard, myhtology and resurrection. Midgard
means earth, Asgard means heaven, Resurrection
means to bring some one back to life and all of this
happens in mythology which I will be using to describe
monsters and certain situations such as Resurrection or
something unbelievable is happening within the story.

20. What I like about the idea
• I like that I will be using Pixel art throughout my final
project.
• I like that I am going to be animating the pixel art even
though it will probably be time consuming.
• I like how I am going to be creating sound effects and music
for my project.
• I like my idea/ concept for the game and how it has quite
viscous under tones.
• I also like how my main character splits into three people.
• I like how there isn’t much planning to do as I already know
what my final project is going to be and what it is going to
look like.
• I like how I have already done most of my experiments.

21. I don’t like about my project
• I don’t like the fact at how I decided I was going to decide to draw
monsters in pixel art.
• I don’t like the fact at how I have to improve my pixel drawing for
my backgrounds.
• I don’t like not knowing what kind of sound effects and music I am
going to create
• I don’t like all of the paper work I have to do before creating my
project
• I don’t like how much work there is to do to just try and get a
distinction ( I am incredibly lazy)
• I don’t like how I have to do a lot of experiments but I might be
able to create different projects springing off from it.
• I don’t like the time limit I have been given to do so much work I
feel like already I would be able to do so much better with more
time on the project.

22. What I want to achieve from the
project
• A distinction
• Apart from that though I want to try and make a
game which on the front looks like an average
medieval exploration and action game with
mythological ties but when you dig underneath
the exterior you find out that those mythological
beasts were just physical forms of the main
characters mental illnesses and at the very end of
the game these such things drives him to the
edge and he commits suicide out of the grief his
mental illnesses were giving him.

23. How will this help me in the future
• It is most likely that this won’t help me too much
in the near future unless it is something that I am
going to use as a reference or as part of my
portfolio when I try to either go into Huddersfield
university or York St. John’ university for
computer game design. If I can’t get into either of
these I am going to try and find an apprenticeship
and if not I will be trying to apply for jobs and
expanding my portfolio in my spare time. All this
project will do is add more to my portfolio and if
it is good then it will probably be one of the first
things that I show to people.

24. Audience
• My primary audience’s age will be 16-19 years of age because I am making this for myself and other
people like me who find mental illness interesting and or have mental illnesses also they could just
be there for the pure fact at how it is a game and it could be fun. My secondary audience age range
will be between 20-25 years of age because they might find mental health something important to
them and if not they can still enjoy games anyone can. My primary audience’s gender will be male
because as I said I am making this for myself and people like myself and that is really just because I
like to play games in my free time. My secondary audience will be female because as most mental
health memes say teenage girls are more likely to think they have depression or something of the
sort. My primary audience for social status will be upper middle class because they are like me and
take a lot of things for granted and see okay situations as something much worse than it really is.
My secondary audience will be lower upper class as they have the same issue they take things for
granted and make situations seem massive. My primary psychographic audience will be socially
conscious type B because they are the people to most likely to think everything is worthless
themselves and others included. My secondary psychographic audience will be the emulator
because they are like me have very low self-esteem and can be quite judgemental. Most of the guys
that I have talked about here well you can usually find them playing video games in their free time.
Also I think they are the kind of people who want to buy merchandise for a game but think it will be
a waste of money in the end.

25. Mind Map

26. Idea visualization

27. Summary of reading, watching videos
and playing games.
• All that I am getting from all of this is that mythology is a
fantastic medium for media as you can change it as much
as you want to I mean look at bahamut it started of as a
giant fish or whale and now it is a massive dragon filled
with rage and fury and when it comes down to the kraken it
is slightly weird as most stories of the beast turn out to be
similar except sometimes it comes from hell and some
other times it just lives in the ocean. So every part of a
myth and a legend can be changed frequently until it fits
what you need it to be. The other great thing about
mythology is that the main character quite a lot of the time
starts of as a no one and then grows into a massive role like
saviour or king. Which is to say that all of mythology have
fantastic stories to back up the visuals.