Full Color Planet

Background

In 2012 when I decided to start a Masters Thesis, the height of the Indie boom on PC & Mobile was in full swing. Full Color Planet is a project that wanted to analyze branding principles and how to apply them for a future indie series of mobile games to create a toolkit of rules to have a memorable and recognizable style across different game types. The name of the result was Full Color Planet

Gameplay

Two games were developed during the production of Full Color Planet. “Hollow Grounds” was a game about a cartographer named Piri that jumps into holes in the desert to map the caves in them. Luckily for Piri, the planet likes him so much that she changes the gravity so he flyers out of them unharmed. The player takes over that part by twisting and turning the phone.

The second game, which never saw full completion was “The highest Heart”, which put players in the shoes of a newborn Harpy, reclimbing the tree she fell out of as an egg during her lifetime. Eyris the harpy can only glide but not walk and the exploration of the game is all done by the cap of mid-air wing flaps Eyris can do before landing on the ground.

Design

Hollow Grounds was designed around using the accelerometer and the thrill of juggling your phone as a gameplay mechanic. The Highest Heart embraced doing a one hand controllable jump and run that could be player on the go. Both designs really embraced Smartphones as a new device and way to play on the go.

Also, both games and the third which was planned out, told one coherent story in the same universe since all of them play (on Ella, the Full Color Planet. As a sentient being it tells the players the stories happening on her as well as change from game to game. So all narrative always had the bigger story of Ella in mind.