Story and Environment Direction

The game I am trying to create will not have much of a focus on the stories of individual characters. The game world will be very sparsely populated by NPC's and the player(s) character will be a blank slate for them to project there own personality onto. However the story of the world as a whole, particularly the story of it's decent into darkness, will be presented to the player as often as possible. One of the easiest ways for me to do this is through the environment. Following in the tradition of games such as Resident Evil and Fallout I will present a desolate world full of reminders of how it's inhabitants may have lived. Propaganda posters that glorify the Shadik army and it's fight against evil will be commonplace and in contrast, graffiti criticizing the Shadik occupation of Namahriad will also be present illustrating to the player what life must have been like before the fall. Like Fallout and Bioshock I will also include audio logs explaining the personal struggles of the soldiers and civilians before and after the fall.

High Concept Fail

As I've been writing my GDD the section that I've been neglecting the most is the high concept. I've realized this is a major problem. When I look back at different mechanics that I've designed  I start to wonder how important they are to the core experience and whether they even work well together or where they clash completely. While my word count is increasing overall, it fluctuates as I develop new ideas and change or scrap old ones. I realise this is part of how concepts develop over time but writing detailed explanations of mechanics, only to scrap them later on, is clearly a waste of time. I can work through these issues in my head and using diagrams which is much faster and only once I've got a unified picture do I need to describe it's parts in depth.
So to help me do this I'm going to develop my high concept by asking myself the following questions:
What kind of experiences are most important to this game.
What mechanics do I have/can I develop to help create these kinds of experiences in the player.
I will have my high concept section finished this weekend and the rest of the GDD should flow much smoother from then on.

On a side note I've decided to scrap the Sci-fi theme and take the concept back to a more medieval feel. While I liked the idea of blending magic and technology and it did create an interesting narrative it was making the game design more of a pain. The choice between what to use for what purpose was giving me a headache; should I use grenades or fireballs, magical barriers or claymores, clairvoyance or satellite imaging. The options where literally endless and I'm trying to create a very tight, minimal set of mechanics that all fit nicely together.  

Concepts change

My original story concept has evolved over the summer and has been adapted as I've changed the gameplay. I spent a lot of time thinking of how to blend the story and world I had designed with the gameplay that I wanted to create.

Last year I wanted to make a stealth game. Now I've decided to go for a survival game influenced more by 'CoD' zombies and 'Gears'' hoard mode. I want to take the idea of defending yourself against waves of enemies and increase the scale. The player(s) must fortify an area and seek out resources in order to keep themselves alive and progress through the waves.

The story I had created last year involved a world centred around the belief that using magic allowed demons into the mortal realm. The main factions in this world are all divided by their views on the safe use of magic. The largest faction within this world is the Shadik empire who have managed to suppress magic within their lands for hundreds of years. Instead of developing their magical potential the people of the Shadik empire focused on advancing technology. My game will take place during the fall of this empire to a plague of demons, as magic begins to resurface and everything the people thought they knew is shattered. The player will be a commoner from the Shadik empire who will go from fighting for his life to being trained to combat the demons and trying to restore some semblance of order to the world.

The First Post

Wow so the first two week haven't exactly been the most productive.
In terms of assets I've been experimenting with Mudbox to produce combat damage on human models. I've created a nasty looking axe wound in the models shoulder and a plasma burn on his chest. Screen shots will follow when I'm next on the Confetti computers. I aim to have a fully textured zombie by december ready to rig when I come back in January. This will be the primary enemy that I will use in my demo.

In terms of concept I've decided to base my level in a quarentined section of a post apocalyptic city. This will give me plenty of barriers to keep the player in the game area. By the end of november I intend to have some concept sketches of the buildings and misc objects that will fill this area. I should have the first of these done by next week.

During the next few weeks I'm also going to begin working on the GDD for my game.