EDIT 20th August 24

This document sets out a general plan for an immersive project currently titled I like Snakes. It acknowledges that the Luna project is proving too big to develop in one pass and that a more playful ‘sketch’ is needed first. Assets created in Snakes will then be reused in the larger Luna planning. This is a very different, less defined environment with inspirations from Meow Wolf – Yume Nikki – Tomb Raider – Hondo 5am – LSD – The Wonka Chocolate Factory – Dante’s Inferno etc.

  • Some design goals:
  • No win or lose ending. Adventure not punishment. Low level of threat and anxiety (except perhaps in the Human Roulette).
    A sense of delving deeper driven by curiosity – the promise of scenery just around the corner.
  • Colour as identity, magic, threat etc. Meow Wolf staff have stressed the use of vibrant colour in their works as opposing ‘polite’ or ‘tasteful’ schemes – I tend to disagree but appreciate that play is encouraged and allowed by ‘childish’ palettes.
  • Disney style “Wienies” or “Mountains” – goals to reach off in the distance. Landmarks. This implies doorways through which the wienies will be seen. I am not keen on having obvious pathways but understand that the visitor needs a journey.
  • Favourite places to stop and rest. Meditative in parts. Save game? Instagram-able? Finds and sharing.
  • Not a random landscape – implied narrative over the path. Sounds, music and style for each realm.
  • Pathways within larger spaces – Portals, Doorways – some hidden. Deeply hidden discoveries / Easter eggs

Design

Game Start: An early version of Luna began in the River Caves. I have come back to that idea for Snakes. Riding on a boat through the River Caves tempts the player to climb inward onto shores to find doorways (as opposed to outside to the rest of the park). Adventure comes by refusing the command DO NOT GET OUT OF THE BOAT. (I note there’s a Christian reference to check out). The Sydney Luna Park River Caves layout allows 7 shores to explore. Not all of these might be populated at first iteration.

Each shore has a door that leads to a WORLD that can have multiple ROOMS with local coherence, details (zoom in).

  • Fish Tank – a WORLD environment based on domestic decorative fish tanks and some of the stranger ornaments that can be bought for them.
    APPEAL: There is oddness in being underwater amid all these familiar but imposingly sized objects.
    START GAME: At the bottom of the tank at the front with the layout made apparent.
    END GAME: A Treasure Chest? It takes you elsewhere.
    NOTES: There is a clash in that the main River Caves are also aquatic.
  • Fabrik – including The Cardboard Disco. All things bespoke. Real world textures. Thinking about Meow Wolf there is a lot of texture beyond CGI that I need to create to give a rough warmth to this and Luna.
    APPEAL: ROOMS based on the texture of painted bits of cardboard which assemble to represent an old warehouse party. Make your way through this scenario. Nostalgia.
    START GAME: In the kitchen, of course. Lots of people? Made of Cardboard.
    END GAME: Be able to exit the party?
    NOTES: Based on parts from a different artwork that’s happening in the house at the moment.
  • Large Glass – The Dancing Bats and Arm Machine and Shoe Guys. Puppet made from TVs that self destructs – “New Fold”. Spiral stairs around a thing. The Globe from HH? That would be a link that no one would get! Essentially it’s a menagerie of Severed Heads objects brought into a playground.
    APPEAL:
    START GAME: A museum?
    END GAME:
    NOTES: The idea here is to move elements of video into the game world. They are not monuments in the general sense but personal monuments nevertheless. The Dancing Bat machine was always a pisstake of The Large Glass.
  • Twittering Machine – A forest with ‘birds’. Draw upon the original artwork. Delve into JG Ballard’s Aircraft/Sex fetishes. Airports and mechanical birds.
    APPEAL: Fantasy of flight, animatronic animals, airports.
    START GAME:
    END GAME: Take off?!
    NOTES: Once developed, to be moved over to both the Dark and Light sides of Luna.
  • Musical Hell – It’s the dopamine hit of the toy shop, taken to a toxic extreme that would please Bosch. His musical hell was at odds with mainstream Christian beliefs. All music is sinful and punished – including psalms and religious songs of praise. I recently tried AI to re-image Bosch’s Musical Hell with Toys and ended up with a completely crap-tastic unexpected image which I rather like. I’m now building a space that looks much like that.

END GAME is that you find the Fisher Price record player which has been making music box sounds that resemble spy recordings from the radio. It is the final mountain.

  • Human Roulette – including City Tidal Wave. Suicidal portals to other realms? Risk and Change and Progress. There will be a lot of physical simulation that will be needed in Luna and this will help to research how that can be conveyed.
    APPEAL: Surprise tricks and treats.
    START GAME: You are in a city. There is a tidal wave that will cover everything. You die. You eventually learn how not to die that way, by entering certain buildings where there are other physical events which kill you in other ways.
    END GAME: You find the right way of dying to get back to the boat.
    NOTES: Touches on the traps and dangers that have been put into Game Engine hacks such as Hondo 5am. There needs to be an area of traps and the sort of rides that lived in Steeplechase.
  • The End – what more can you say? Well actually it’s a place holder for now. I don’t think this should have an end. Maybe something just called THE END.

Why is it called I Like Snakes? This was a website I made back in 2009. Sometimes I like to make things that remain completely obscure and this was one of them. Along with the number codes that I put in albums for years.