Mirror Image

What it Is

Mirror Image is a narrative design assignment I completed for a course at Futuregames. The assignment was to write a concept document for a game based on a prompt. 

The prompt I selected was for a fantasy game. The three narrative pillars that work as the foundation for all other choices in this design can be found on pages 2-3. This document consists of worldbuilding, main characters, some tropes involved, a brief rundown of the storyline (with gaps to fill in during the development process) and discussion of the main themes of the game.

I do not own any of the concept images in this document and they are all linked back to their original sources. They are merely used as mockups to get a base idea of some designs.

The Document

On Writing A Concept

There is something to be said for a thorough concept document. There are of course limits to how thorough one should be, given that no plan survives first contact with development without any flexibility, but I like to operate on the "hit by a bus" principle with my documentation. Thorough enough documentation means that no personal absence can hold up the process to the point of stopping it. 

In all game projects I've been a part of at Futuregames, I've taken some part in writing down the concepts for them. I've mainly done concept design, narrative design, and detail design for game mechanics. The prompt for this course called for us to anticipate and answer as many questions about our concepts as we could upfront. I found that a very useful rule for any game documentation. Every part of a game, however basic, needs to be explained in order for a team to be able to put it into practice.