A game concept revolving around a protagonist’s journey through different pieces of artwork in a gallery. Avant guard as a title is a play on the phrase Avant Garde – a phrase used typically used within the art industry (referring to innovative pieces that break the traditional mould), and the verb and noun of ‘guard’ meaning ‘to protect, or the person who is protecting’. The initial concept takes inspiration from Nintendo’s open world, exploration/adventure games The Legends of Zelda: Breathe of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Similarly to Breath of the Wild, Avant Guards protagonist would wake up in a world with no memories and go through different challenges and enemies to piece together the story, collecting weapons, interacting with NPCs and be led to boss battles that help wrap up the overarching plot.

The plot would centre around the protagonist going through the paintings in the gallery to collect weapons and build relationships with characters, guiding them to realising the pieces in the gallery were all made by one artist. A sculpture of the artists sits in the depths of the gallery, and completing elements of the games final mission would bring the sculpture to life for a final battle. Completing the game could make the protagonist realise they were also a self portrait of the artist, made prior to their deterioration. The game could take inspiration for Oscar Wilde’s A Picture of Dorian Gray when exploring the artists sculpture and protagionist.

The game would involve balancing elements of both open-world games and dungeon crawler games. You can travel freely throughout each individual painting and the gallery; however, both the paintings and gallery are contained within their bounds. This would allow for a plethora of different environments with different art styles or themes.

 To keep the game cohesive thematically, the narrative aspect of the game would have to be fleshed out to be adaptive within these different environments and have a consistent thematic element throughout the game that doesn’t change between paintings. For this element, nature could be a good visual motif that plays into the visual theme of the game, and the narrative theme. The plants could become more withered and darker as it gets closer to the final sculpture and the preceding paintings that have a similar dark element. They could blossom and become more saturated around paintings with a more positive element in the plot and change art style while remaining recognizable.

When looking for inspiration from environmental concept artists, I will be looking to push myself and find people who use brighter colours and play around with light.  This is due to my concept having themes that typically seem darker, and I feel has preconceived expectations of style that I want to subvert. This decision comes down to me wanted to make a game that is visually impactful and would appeal to a larger audience, not limited to ‘art lovers’, but for all video game enjoyers. The game may utilise different styles, but for the gallery I would like to explore this angle and save the exploration of different styles for a more in-depth look into this game concept with less time constraints at a later date. If time allows, I may come back and do some research into these styles.