Inspiration

The reason I chose to use flash and develop a 2 dimensional platform game is for 2 main reasons. The first being that I had no previous experience in Flash or Actionscript and recognised that it is an extremely important skill to have and one which can be utilised in a variety of different ways for a multitude of different purposes. The second reason is because I think it is extremely important when doing any project that I am passionate about it. My fond memories as a child were playing Super Mario World for the SNES or Sonic the Hedgehog for the sega. A combination of loveable characters, vibrant fantasy worlds and rich diversity of enemies and challenges really drew me in to play these classic games hour after hour. With that said I knew from the very start of the project that I wanted my game to create many of these design elements to create a game that is visually and aesthetically stimulating as well functional.



Everyone who knows me knows that I am extremely excited by science fiction. I strongly believe art, films and literature are most interesting when they show something beyond the realm of normal life. In theatre for example I much favour practitioners such as Bertolt Brecht or Antonin Artaud, who saw artistic truth as something which represents a theme rather than replicates it. Brecht once said that theatre shouldn't be a mirror to hold up to society but a hammer in which to shape it. Both Artaud and Brecht used symbolism to portray a message rather than trying to recreate reality much like other famous theatrical practitioners such as naturalist, Constantin Stanislavski. In this same sense I think there is something special about creating something unlike real life: A camera can take a perfect picture of a situation but it is an artist's individuality that really makes a message special. This is why I love good science fiction so much.


Take Frank Herbert's Dune as an example. Dune is an excellent novel and one which I have been deeply inspired by. It is a story of love, politics, ecological change, religion, betrayal, corruption etc. The fact that it is set in a distant made up planet filled with alien technology and magnificently imagined creatures just adds to the quality of the story. In the same sense that William Shakespeare's classics like Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Twelfth Night or any other of his plays are relevant not only in this chronological era but were just as relevant in a different time and a different place. It is the same reason why the original Star Wars films were so popular; The character driven stories, which echoed those of Ancient Greek mythology could have been set in Manchester instead of Tatooine and the base story would have been just as relevant.

Other novels I considered when coming up with the setting for my game were The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stephenson, Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Bloodtide by Melvin Burgess and The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett. Also speaking of Douglas Adams there was a great serial of the original Doctor Who series from the Tom Baker years also written by Adams called 'Pirate Planet'. I was really interested in the integration of pirates in a science fiction setting, a theme which has been used countless amounts of times in different mediums for example the Japanese animated film 'Castle in the Sky' by Studio Ghibli.