I wrote down a few story and gameplay ideas, but nothing was really clicking. So I let inspiration take me through the places I went. All the photographs in this post are my property and were taken by me during the summer.
On the train journey between home and university, I always pass this derelict building. I've no idea what it used to be, but I felt very inspired by the look of a building that was once quite grand and has now been left to fall apart.
Hanging onto this idea of old buildings and ruins, I've also been influenced by Lincoln's own ancient architecture. Bishop's Palace has this great combination of crumbling stone walls and flourishing foliage. I suppose I was naturally drawn to notion of the history behind old architecture and the sort of harmonious feel you get from seeing plants naturally thriving as the buildings are decaying.
In July I visited Longleat House, and the idea really did strike me in a second as I was looking around the grounds. "I'm going to do a manor house!" So after that trip, I was thinking about how maybe I could combine some of the gameplay ideas I had thought about already with my decision to use this sort of scene as the setting.
When I moved back to Lincoln just before term time I found this sectioned-off area in an industrial estate. It reaffirmed my idea that I'd wanted to create something to do with ruin and overgrown plants. So this was sort of the point were I combined my ideas and thought about making my game level about a run-down manor house. I'll be coming back to these photographs during production, they definitely capture the main elements I want to include in my modelling.
