Game Concept-- Terrene: Seed of Hope

Terrene: Seed of Hope

Concept:

The mass appeal and age-transcendent qualities of Hayao Miyazaki’s artwork and storytelling are remarkable. He is especially fond of casting a young girl as the central/lead character in his animated films. This is a rare—if not unattempted—model for a videogame character.

A story in which a single hero struggles against great odds or greater evils becomes especially compelling when that person is a youth. My favorite examples of this idea manifest themselves in Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda series, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus from Sony Computer Entertainment, and the Square-Enix and Disney Interactive Studios collaborations on the Kingdom Hearts series.

Terrene is best realized as an Action-Adventure RPG. This genre serves several desirable functions: it allows for an immersive story, a large and varied map (affording the player hours of exploration), player customization (abilities, inventory, item upgrades, etc), and any situational combination of other genres (puzzle-solving, fighting, racing, etc.)

The game world will be comprised of several continents, each with its own unique climate, inhabitants, creatures, and vegetation. The “combat” won’t really be combat at all… there won’t be weapons or violence in the conventional sense. Initially, the player will have to avoid combat by escaping into tree trunks, across streams, high into the limbs of giant trees, reflecting the appropriate timidity of a child. Eventually, however, she will learn how to unlock the magic hidden inside of various types of seeds. These “powers” will rarely be offensive; she will develop the ability to entangle enemies in thick vines, create a cocoon around herself, sprout plants which launch her high into the air, and use the earth and its vegetation in other phenomenal ways. Her name, Terrene, is a word that, when used adjectivally, means “earthy” or “worldly” and, in its noun form, means, simply, “the earth”.

When the character is fully developed and she has unlocked her skill set, barren environments and empty wastelands will grow green and lush in her wake. This will, in fact, become her goal: to breathe life into the weakened environments of the world.The visuals of the game should have a richly (but realistically) colored palette with a bold, animated feel, akin to the art design of The Mark of Kri (also Sony Computer Entertainment).

Our young female character’s movements will be animated to replicate the motor skills of, say, an awkward eight-year-old girl. As the story thickens and she begins to gain mastery of her skills and an understanding of her responsibility (eight to ten hours into gameplay), her animations will begin to subtly and slowly change to reflect her rise to maturity and an increase in her resolve. Her movements will become controlled and purposeful, providing the physical realization of a person rising to meet their fate.


Backdrop:

Our main character, a nine-year old girl named Terrene, lives with her aunt and uncle in a small village nestled in a mountain valley. The village, named Sowden after its rotund, pig-farming founder, is surrounded by dense deciduous forest and, on three sides, the huge dark cliff faces of the mountain. Her uncle Coren runs a tiny shop out of which he sells vegetable seeds to the local farmers. The farms of Sowden normally yield huge crops of big, luscious vegetables… but her uncle hasn’t received a shipment of seeds in many weeks. Needless to say, this has him—and the rest of the town—very worried.

When we first meet Terrene, she is running across a small, fenced-in field. We follow her clumsy gait and look of intense determination. The way she’s pictured here, we might think she is rushing to somebody’s aid… but she jumps high into the air and belly-flops wildly into a pile of leaves, laughing and rolling, scattering the pile. An annoyed woman turns and reprimands her: “Terrene, why don’t you do something useful? I’m sure your uncle could use a little help around the shop.”

Coren sold his last package of squash seeds to one of the town’s farmers one week ago. For the past few days, the farmers have grown increasingly angry at his inability to supply them with the source of their income—and the town’s livelihood. Terrene is preoccupied with the various concerns of a rambunctious squirt and understands very little about the village’s predicament.

One day, while playing in the house, she accidentally knocks into the kitchen table, sending a bowl of tomatoes upside-down on the floor. As the fruit splits and the juices run across the wood, Coren—a normally sweet and soft-spoken man—sends her outside in anger. While her aunt Besom (“Bess” for short) reprimands Coren for his harsh words, Terrene, now crying and frustrated with her uncle’s sudden outburst, overhears their conversation. She listens as Aunt Bess and Uncle Coren fret about their situation and the unanswered letters they’ve sent to the trade village. Half out of stubborn pride, half out of a deep affection for her family and home, Terrene decides to go to the trade village herself and bring home as many seeds as she can carry. She scrawls a note, packs a small bag, and, just before dawn the next day, begins walking toward the mountain trail.

While trekking along the steep mountain paths to reach the village on the other side, the terrain begins to change. The thick forest grows sparse, and the remaining trees seem somehow too short. At the top of the mountain, Terrene is shocked to look out upon a landscape that, although once tangled with forest, has become barren and hard.

She finally arrives at the trade village with ragged clothes and a dirt-covered face. The town is largely abandoned. But, as she approaches the center of town, she notices an old woman stooping at the roots of a twisting Banyan tree. After a few more steps, she stops in awe: the old woman is holding her hands just above the ground, urging a tiny green shoot out of the earth. Inch by inch over the course of a few minutes, the plant opens its leaves and reaches up toward her rising hands.

After regaining her composure, Terrene calls out and ambles toward the old woman, startling her out of her trance. She introduces herself as Geda and listens as Terrene explains Uncle Coren’s situation.Once Terrene has stopped her breathless story, Geda sets upon explaining what she knows of the disappearing landscape. A few months prior, the crops had stopped growing. Nobody could explain it; the soil had always been nutritious and fertile. And then, with little warning, the trees and grass, flowers and vines all began pulling themselves down into the earth. Acre by acre, all of the plants in the region withdrew completely into the soil. It was as if they were hiding.

Geda did not say from what; she could already see the concern on the poor girl’s face. As they sat in quiet conversation beneath the tree, the shoot that Geda had been tenderly urging from its hiding place now grows rapidly, flourishing and shuddering in the shade. Along the ground, in a line from the plant’s base, hints of green begin poking their heads above the soil. All around Terrene and the small area in which she is sitting, a green carpet emerges. Geda now realizes: this girl has a remarkable power. The concern on her face was not fear, it was compassion. And the determination which brought her through the mountains might be the key to reviving the world’s environments. She must be taught to actualize her potential. She could be the seed of a dying planet's last hope for survival.

Beatrix

How long, time
at all measurable in this state,
had she pressed forward?

She was a child, once—a girl
with a vague concept
of her importance—but now,
now that everyone she knew
is in the past, now
it is clear: her path
winds broken, hard,
lit by an indomitable
will to regain her life.

In her reflection—
the end of a long
blade propped in
sand, striking
its length, whetstone
in palm, sparks
flying and dying
as quickly as
they were born—
in her reflection
something cold
forged, hard
in her skin, eyes
sharp with fear.