CREATURES
In the absence of courses and professional projects on creature design, I made up some game design challenges around the creation of creatures.
So that you can have fun with them too, here they are 3 of them in the form of exercises:
01
Forget about
Game Master fiat
Take a well-known fantasy creature and try to explain it
with the logic of your world.
Here the Phoenix explained scientifically:
Problem: Being reborn from its own ashes
Step 1 Reborn... : The phoenix would be a bird that can reproduce without mating : by parthenogenesis (apomixie to be exact, which allows to have a genetic clone of the parent).
Step 2 ... From its ashes: In the same way that some trees secrete a substance to fireproof themselves when forest fires approach, the phoenix would produce a substance in which the egg would bathe within its reproductive system.
To hatch, the egg would need a great source of heat (even for a short time, or to remain under the heat of the ash produced).
We can then imagine 2 distinct situations:
-
The phoenix constantly carries eggs, when one rots it evacuates it and another one is formed. If the bird catches fire while an egg is waiting in it, its immolation allows the egg to hatch from under its ashes.
-
The phoenix voluntarily immolates itself by provoking flammable vapors (like eucalyptus) and by rubbing its feathers which then ignite under the rhythm of this dance. From his sacrifice is born his clone.
Theories on transgenerational memory could make the parent phoenix and its child even more like-minded.
02
Where does this one come from?
Step 1: Take a stroll through an image site (Pinterest, ArtStation).
Step 2: Choose a creature that inspires you
Step 3: Invent a background for it! Why does it have this trait? How does it serve him? How does it serve (or create a challenge for) the player?
This dragon seems transparent, like the fruit he ingests.
It seems light and fragile, its skin could easily pierce and release liquid as invigorating as the fruit if player eat one.
But it seems difficult to catch and dodge effectively, as if slipping through the fingers.
It could be spotted by the movement of the plant it just left, bending under its impulse.
It seems to be able to camouflage itself well. Perhaps by eating other foods it acquires a corresponding appearance, advantages and disadvantages.
Cloudberry dragon by Alexandra GaudiBuendia Khitrova
on ArtStation
03
Justify your madness!
Sometimes you really want to see a peculiar situation happen. Without more reason than it seems fun.
This is not a problem if it can be justified and useful for the game!
​
Just 1 step: find context and a use for what you want to create
​
Once while drawing I pictured a big beetle pulling prisoners in the desert.
I wanted this image to exist so I integrated it into a game, a story.
The resulting concept is an ARPG where the player embodies a prisoner who cannot escape or else die in the desert facing the terrible predators that inhabit it. The beetle, although slow, is the only animal strong enough to carry the prisoner, protected from predators and the prisoner himself. Its objective is to bring the prisoner to a prison. Many adventures will follow, between fighting the beetle, with the beetle, trying to communicate, before finally fleeing together after being delivered to the prison.