Assimilation

This is a worldbuilding bible project I created in a class for my game design degree. I worked alone on it. Over the course of a semester, I concepted, created, and polished a large, detailed world bible to show to industry professionals in a presentation.

For the world bible document, I created cultures, maps, biomes, ecologies, and a story treatment for my world. During class periods, I had long feedback and critique sessions with my peers, taking notes and refining aspects of my world to polish it further.

I am responsible for all combat design in the game. This includes all character combatants, the player movement, and supporting systems. Additionally, I designed the scenario and world the game takes place in, as well as wrote the script for the game. In the recording studio, I both directed our voice actor and did voice work myself.

CULTURES

Creating the countries and their cultures was the biggest part of writing this world bible. With the philosophy I went into designing this with, every aspect of every every part of the bible ties back to the people living in the world. I developed the cultures to all inherently affect each other for specific interactions.

MAPS

The map provides context for the entire rest of the world bible. I used the commercial map creation tool Inkarnate to create my maps, creating the tectonic plates, continents, biomes, and cultural basins. I learned a lot about creating realistic worlds and landscapes to keep the world grounded in reality.

BIOMES

Creating unique biomes for this world was a challenge. The concept for the world is very evocative, so I tried to make my biomes as creative and horrifying as possible. They all have a unique profile and very directly affect the cultures that live in them, being the base upon which every culture is built.

ECOLOGIES

The biomes of the world, specifically the ones tied to the cultures, each have their own variety of animals and plants I created as part of this project. I designed the food chain and ecological interactions of the wildlife in the biomes of my cultures for this project.

TREATMENT

As the last part of my bible project, I created a story treatment for the world. I designed characters and wrote an outline for the chapters of a story that takes place in this world, featuring aspects of every culture. The story deals in the themes of the world, being about how greed destroys people and how banding together as a multicultural community leads to a better future.

LONG CRITIQUE SESSIONS

Over the course of developing this world bible, I met with my peers weekly to give and receive critique for multiple hours. These long sessions of feedback and development are not something I had experienced before, and I've become a lot better at noting, prioritizing, and implementing feedback since this project.

PRESENTING CONCEPTS TO INDUSTRY LEADERS

At the end of the class, the professor set up a meeting for all the students to meet up with industry professionals and show off our world bible and story treatment. This meeting was to have us practice and learn from the experience of selling our pitches and getting hired for new projects in the industry.

LARGE-SCALE NARRATIVE DESIGN
This project was created over the course of many months, and is the largest narrative design project I've ever undertaken. The process of creation was long and required lots of going back and editing prior work. Making sure that everything is cohesive and fits together all at the end was a massive challenge, and I've learned a lot about large-scale narrative projects and creating a world that people can get invested in.