Week 14: Islands and changes

The Islands

This week I was going to try something new—give each island one Impression, Path, Focus, and Event each (in any order), then give the island a brief history or give each part of the island a historic vignette. What I actually did was only make first change. Each island this week has a single detail of each type, so I could see how they turned out vs the islands I made with the more complex dice roll mechanics.

Barrow Island

Elevation

32 m

Area

3.4 km2

• Impression: Tetrapod wave barriers lie along all the shores and are tumbled together further up the slopes, where concrete plants pump grey sludge into steaming 4-legged iron moulds.
• Path: A main street of little decoration through the island's single, divided town. Studded with bollards and banded with sturdy iron fences, it resembles a fortress more than a
• Focus: The rock spire to the Northwest, upon which a foghorn perches in perpetual silence.
• Event: A temple call at midday. Scant minutes later, dismayed outbursts shoot both ways across the main street—shouting, cursing, sneering. Someone throws a rock, smashes a window, and a little while later all falls silent again.

Rudder Island

Elevation

82 m

Area

0.99 km2

• Impression: Limp spiderwebs unmoored from their original anchors. They drape the island and slough into the sea. No spiders can be seen anywhere, nor any flies.
• Path: A natural stone chimney provides a cruel, jagged route up the thinner spire.
• Focus: The Western end of the island juts out over the sea, and from the tip hangs a rusty anchor on a rope that's more moss than fibre.
• Event: The clouds open and the sun peers down with alien curiosity, burning the cobwebs off the island until the clouds roll in again.

Fort Pelican

Elevation

14 m

Area

0.5 km2

• Event: An agonising metal scraping din echoes inside the sealed-off stub of the fort, then dies away.
• Path: The rim of the disused fort is lined with twisted fibrils of rebar bent down onto the concrete like rusty railroad track.
• Focus: A welded-shut metal hatch emblazoned with three warnings: explosives, radiation, and a triangle containing a shattering human body pulled apart—or perhaps reassembled—by disembodied arms.
• Impression: Palpable relief washes up over the edge of the fort from the sea below.

Zero Island

Elevation

101 m

Area

8.4 km2

• Path: A mountain path trod by workhorses, trampled flat; the roots of shrubs and trees either side dangle out of the dirt into this channel worn away by centuries of foot- and hoof-traffic.
• Impression: Bold anticipation rises from the soil. An opportunity is coming, but a disaster for all those who aren't prepared for it.
• Event: The Western fragment of the island vanishes into thin air, leaving a gap rapidly filled by churning seawater.
• Focus: A cluster of water buttes full of rain and little night-blue frogs.

Tempo Station

Elevation

91 m

Area

N/A

• Focus: A porthole on the side of the vast, perpendicular ship through which a ghastly laughing face can be seen.
• Event: A mighty horn sounds from somewhere inside the station and it rotates in the water by 90 degrees, to face North instead of West.
• Impression: Everywhere there are marks of force, but seemingly not military violence. There are scorches and warped sections of deck, but no bullet holes or cannon impacts.
• Path: A rotating gantry runs the width of the ship; scientists in windbreakers stroll along, checking the horizon and depths with their instruments.

Valour Island

Elevation

46 m

Area

2.5 km2

• Impression: Cracked and defaced stone grave-markers dot the dusty, barren land, at every peak, in every ravine, crowding out what little grass and trees remain.
• Path: A row of red flags strung between the two peaks along a heavy-duty steel rope, anchored to the ground by being swallowed by huge concrete blocks.
• Focus: A grave-differ's hovel, broken shovels stacked outside, a little furnace inside that contains…
• Event: A chunk of the island caves in, revealing glittering caverns that are soon swamped by broken stone, grave-dirt, and withered grasping bodies.

Breakneck Atoll

Elevation

11 m

Area

3.4 km2

• Impression: Green sea-glass scattered all over the sand.
• Path: The atoll forms a near-complete ring; the channel where the two ends nearly touch is surprisingly treacherous underfoot, and is dangerously close to stingray hunting-grounds.
• Focus: A speedboat, melted and crumpled by some horrific heat, stranded on shore.
• Event: A pearlescent whale surfaces in the middle distance and slaps the water with its tail as it descends again, creating a fine mist through which the sunlight scatters into a rainbow.

Thoughts and Changes

Overall I don't really like this approach at the moment. I'm sure with a bit of tweaking I could make something I'm satisfied with, but this is already outside what I'm trying to do with this game, so I don't really feel the need to work on it right now.

Two things I noticed:

• Firstly, I defaulted to a more general description instead of the first-person exploratory PoV for each of the details.
• Secondly, I think the order Impression -> Path -> Focus -> Event works best for this (start with the big picture and move in to the small one).

Next week I'm gonna get another of the games in the set ready to start testing&mdahs;it's tentatively called Earth Mover Paradise and it's a map-making game of internal spaces (so, kinda like gridded dungeon maps).