Fred (Roland on the ropes)

To start the second year of games art and design we all have been given the task of re-designing an existing game, however we have all randomly been given a game that we know nothing about. I have been given Fred.

Fred is the original name of the game in Spain but it has also been known as Roland on the ropes. You play as an adventurer named Roland who is exploring some dungeons in Egypt and he must collect as much treasure as possible and then escape towards the exit. However to make the game harder there is no map to guide you through the dungeon forcing the player to memorise the route. As you progress through the dungeon going deeper underground you will encounter different enemies, to begin with you will encounter ghosts and rats, then later you will encounter mummies, bats and even skeletons.

Inspiration and Ideas

I want to keep the same game concept of finding and collecting artifacts then having to find your own way out without the use of a map. I will now look at exisiting products in every media to see what is successful and how I can be successful with my re-design.

I began looking at the most popular adventurer, Indiana Jones. I started looking at him because the character Fred looks similar as Jones. He wears the classic Indiana hat that makes him so famous and he runs around with a gun, similar to Indiana's hand gun. It's also similar in the aspect of collecting artifacts and then having to escape, much similar to the Indiana Jones films.

I then looked at Lara Croft as she is a highly known character who explores caves looking for historical artifacts. She must solve puzzles aswell as collecting artifacts whilst having to encounter traps and dangerous enemies that can kill her. She is one of the most iconic female characters in the world, infact her reputation in the games lead to the 2 Lara Croft films played by Angelina Jolie.

After looking at these I recalled a televison programme Jungle Run. This was a prgramme on CITV I used to watch after school, it is an adventure game show that takes place in a jungle. Teams of young explorers would undertake a series of challenges and games in an attempt to collect monkey statues needed to enter the Tomb of the Jungle King. The aim was to collect as many as possible because the more statues you collected the longer you had inside the tomb, which created a higher chance of winning more prizes. However there is a catch to this game as you have to collect the monkey idals before your time runs out otherwise you will be trapped inside the tomb forever.

My research carried onto the Uncharted series on the Playstation 3. This is about a 3rd person shooter where you play as a treasure hunter called Nathan "Nate" Drake. Who travels the world looking for historical artifacts, however on the way he comes across other treasure hunters who want to use the artifacts for greed and destruction. As Drake you must solve puzzles and fight henchmen who get in your way.

With more research I gained some inspiration from the some other films. The Mummy. This tells the story of about two lovers in Egypt around 1290 BC however they are not allowed to fall in love and she kills herself. Imhotep then vows to bring her back from the dead but ends up being caught by the Pharaoh's gaurds and is trapt in a sarcophagus and is forced to endure the curse of the Hom Dai, this ritual graunts him eternal life but must suffer from his wounds forever. The story then sips forward to modern times where a young architech discovers a key and map leading to the hidden city in Egypt. Evelyn then goes looking for a guide who has been to the lost city before, she finds it with the help from Rick. When they get to the temple the couple uncover Imhoteps sarcophagus and oopen it to find his rotten mummified corpse aswell as finding the book of the dead. One night Evelyn reads the contents of the book awakening the immortal Imhotep, awakened he hunts down his sacred jars and steals Evelyn for his ritual to bring back the love of his life. Rick and the others then have to find a way to stop Imhotep from killing Evelyn and destroying the world. 

 

Finally my last bit of research led me to the disney film National Treasure. This film is about a historian named Benjaminn Gates played by Nicolas Cage, is seaarching for a lost treasure, which was oncece protected by the kinghts of templar and hidden by the freemason during the beginning of the United States. Gates discovers a hiddenn map on the baack of the declartion of indpendence, howeverr gates isn't alone in wanting to find this lost treasure.










Story

The year is 1945 and the end of the second world war is coming to a close. Fred is a young man but unlike many other young men who joined the army Fred is an architect explorer, who first became interested in discovering the hidden treasures of the past when his granddad took  him to an ancient Egyptian museum. 

Throughout his life Fred became a novice explorer finding little artefacts and clues leading to far greater treasures, but one day at his home in London he receives a telegram from the government informing him that his Granddad has gone missing under covering the mysterious tombs in Egypt.  

Fred’s mother wishes for her son to stay in England and not to go looking for his Granddad, as she only recently got news of her husbands death in France fighting in the war.

Fred lies to his mother and says that he will not leave her and stay to look after her. But he packs a light bag and leaves in the middle of the night.  

He stows away on a ship that is heading towards Cairo and the ship gets attacked by Nazi planes causing it to sink just before reaching Cairo.  

Fred wakes up lying face up towards the sky in a jungle. Getting up he discovers that blind luck has got him to his destination and he is facing the Egyptian pyramids. Unfortunately he doesn’t know where his granddad has ended up. This must mean that he would need to explore the pyramids for further clues.

Fred discovers clues that only he would be able to discover due to him knowing his granddad. As Fred ventures deeper into the tombs inside the pyramids he gets the feeling that he isn’t alone. 

He finds a hidden artefact that he remembers was mentioned in the natural history museum which his granddad wanted to discover. As Fred picks it up a blind light shines out of the artefact and the whole pyramid lights up bringing it to life and everything in it.

Fred ventures further down into the pyramid and as he does he uncovers remains of open sarcophagus’s, keeping on his gaud he must ensure he doesn’t get captured and turned into one of the undead. Fred finally discovers his granddad and he is being held captive by a dog headed being (Anubis)

Anubis wanted Fred’s granddad to help uncover the hidden power of the artefact but Fred’s granddad destroyed it into 5 pieces and it was scattered around the tomb.
Anubis makes a deal to Fred that if he helps him find these pieces he will release his granddad and let him go. However Anubis has his minions patrolling the tomb and refuses to call them off as he wants Fred to fail.
Fred agrees and goes off searching for the artefact pieces.
As Fred uncovers the artefacts he has to solve traps, puzzles and even battle against mythological creatures to retain them. 
Once young Fred has collected them all he heads back to Anubis to collect his granddad. Fred gives Anubis the pieces and Anubis lets Fred’s granddad go. Anubis places the 5 pieces together and unleashes the power of the underworld creating a portal to release destruction upon the world.
Fred must battle against Anubis using a light artefact. Fred defeats Anubis by pushing him into the Underworld portal that he created. Once Anubis is defeated Fred takes his granddad back to London with his mum.

The End.

Initial Sketches


After I studied these inspirations from treasure hunting and adventure games I have decided to stick with that and began some simple thumbnail sketches taking no more than 2 minutes each so I could get a quick idea of how I wanted my main character "Fred" to look. I stuck with him being a male as otherwise I would have abit of trouble workinng around the name. When I was coming up with these thumbnails I was constantly thinking about how I would I want him to appear to the player? Was he going to be a hard core character? or someone fuuny with a sense of humour? The more I got drawing these thumbnails the quicker I discovered that I wanted him to be a ruff character who doesn't take any crap, because from all these inspirations most of these characters always let someone get away with taking a friend hostage and using them against you.

Once I had come up with a basic design for Fred I felt that I should move onto the environments that Fred would have to battle through to get to his goal. I began with looking at typical Acient Egypt with the pryramids and tombs.

After these basic sketches I went into further detail to experiment around with the environments. I wanted to create a high atmosphere with harsh detail to give off some tension.

With some of these ideas down I moved onto the villians and how I wanted them to look disturbing but also iconic because I wanted to get in bedded inside the players head.

With some of these basic thumbnail sketches I decided to look at Anubis the God of death. As I felt that he would be the best idol for a villain in Egypt.

Final Design for Anubis who is the main villian to challenge Fred in his journey.