Fit the 4th: Games 2005-2007

There are some bizarre doodles in my sketchbooks from circa 2005 (and 2006, and 2007) that are definitely for games, but I have no memory of them being attached to any kind of organised effort to make anything. As usual.

First, though, the 'Final Oath' thing from 2005 seems to have undergone a small revitalisation the following year. I have a script for the actual game somewhere, which should be treated like the Necronomicon or drunk people on the Tube and never ever looked at.

The generic White Mage rides again!

I'm absolutely sure this pose is ripped from somewhere. No idea where, though, sadly.

I've no idea what these are supposed to belong to. Presumably not each other, despite their suspiciously similar armoury.

 

 

 One of the many reasons I curse Dante's Inferno - the game, that is, I curse The Divine Comedy for different reasons, not least fuelling Rossetti - is that I quite liked the idea of a game taking place entirely in an afterlife, and now it's ruined. Still, from the looks of these, it could have been ruined anyway.

Listless barechested men always ruin it.

And a few random ideas from all over the shop.

Can you say 'derivative'?

 

Fit the 3rd: Games 2005-2006

There seems to have been only the one so-called game present on my books in 2005, although it could well be three different projects that were massively massively similar. I suspect it's the second option.

The first thing was something apparently called 'Final Oath' (not derivative at all), featuring a man in a dress and also time-travelling for some reason.

Yer bog-standard White Mage character. Every game needs one if you're fifteen and know no better.

The second, and probably not contiguous, game doesn't have a name, but I have a nagging feeling it was ripping off something.

Okay, this is just copying Hyung-tae Kim (il miglior fabbro).

And also this, which is nothing more than the ravages of a mind without a clear idea of design principles.

Also Timesplitters 2.

Fit the 2nd: Games 2003 - 2004

I honestly have no idea where these drawings are from, or indeed why they're in biro. But then it was 2004, a time when colour was to be feared and avoided.

I suspect a few people were planning to make some kind of 16-bit/ flash-based game, quite possibly in the Street Fighter template, but in a 19th century lithograph stylee. Personally I'd still like to see Tenniel's Alice kicking a Pirahnamoose in the face, but that's probably just me.

A: Hey, these drawings have no noses.
B: How do they smell?
A: That's a ridiculous question, they're renderings of three-dimensional objects in two-dimensional space, they're not even sentient.

Fit the 1st: Games 2001-2003

I did a lot of  'concept art' for 'games' (read: drawing characters for amorphous projects my friends attempted at school while having no particular idea of how to make a game) right the way through school. Obviously none of them got off the ground, but the character sketches do give an insight into how someone goes about designing the most bland things imaginable.           

'Zee' from something that became a .Hack clone. I'm pretty sure this was done on the back cover of my prep diary in primary school, so it'd be 2000 or 2001. Look at the sword. Then look at the trouser-chains. Now tell me how either of those make any sense.

Zee and Sim from the aforementioned .Hack clone, which I picked up again in 2002, apparently. Actually they were supposed to be manifestations of data inside a computer program, so it's more like a Planet B clone. Nevertheless. This definitely owes something to Rayman, as well as Metal Gear Solid.

And this owes more than something to Andrew Dickman, whom I pretty consistently ripped off for about three years running. Which dates it at about 2002/3. Although I'm not wholly sure what this game was going to be, I do know the Vash-photocopy has fishnet armwarmers, and I'm not sure what to make of that.

And, of course, generic impractically-costumed dreck. Something tells me this was the first of many (well, three) RPGs I helped plan, back when all involved still had free time and creative will. This would be Bane, part of something made circa 2003. Not the Bane,a Bane.

Yet more fishnets. Was it the fashion? Was it also the fashion to have one leg longer than the other? And to accessorise your floating ball of molten hate with superfluous Wolverine claws? Someone called this chap Kyle, though I suspect it was not me.

'Lucile', the obligatory singular female character! Although strangely not the obligatory support or magical character, we seem to have been bucking the trend there. Look at that torso. Horror films have been made out of less.