the-ufo

[the-ufo]

A guide to creativity

A lot of people, especially beginners, struggle with being creative and coming up with new and innovative ideas. When you search online for how to be creative, it's tough to find a practical solution, something that will actually help you think creatively, and not just set the stage for you to do so.

I'll be focusing here on video games, since it's the medium I am most familiar with, but this can be applied to any form of art you want.

I think creativity is best described by the saying "think outside the box", and to do so, instead of randomly throwing ideas and hoping they will land outside of the box, you should try to understand what the box, or in this metaphor the usual trappings of the art form you're working with.

For this example lets use a 2D platformer games. Let's say that you want to create an innovative 2D platformer game, but can't think of any ideas to what would set you apart from the others. First thing you should do, is try understanding what the box is, and in this case, what are the constraints of almost every, if not all, 2D platformer games. In other words, write a list of what is common between almost all 2D platformer games.

TO BE CLEAR, i'm not talking about the neccecary ellements that makes a platformer game a platformer, but the things that almost always appear in these games. Our point is to find the rule to be able to think of exceptions, so don't think about exceptions with writing these. After you did it your list would probably look pretty short, probably like this:

Jumping

Platforms

You moving a character with the keyboard.

We could use this to move onto the next step, where we pick one of these words and subvert it.

For example, we can say "what if we made a platformer without jumping?" or "what if we made a platformer where you don't move the character?" And This is a great start, but if the "box" is defined with so little words, even tough it gives you a lot of opportunity for exploration, it only really give you a vague direction to where "outside of the box" is, and you still need to do a lot of thinking creatively yourself.

So for a beginner with, someone who need a more strict direction, it would be best if you try to include in your list as much as possible, and everything that is typically in a 2D platformer should be there. This is still not an easy task, you need to understand the medium you're working in pretty good, and pay attention to things that almost always get under the radar.

Here is a list of everything I found is commonly in the mechanics of platformer games:

jump arc- the jump activates when you press its button on the ground and always follows an arc that first goes up, eases in and out at the peak and then goes down.

basic movement is controlled with right and left that move along the x axis

health - the player usually has a relatively low amount of health that gets reduced by one each time they perform an undesirable act such as falling, hitting an enemy or touching obstacles the health does not affect the player unless it reaches 0

death - when the health of the player reach 0 they are set back to a previous point and need to redo some actions

checkpoints - set points in the level that save the players progress which they are sent back to upon dying

platforms - objects in the level that the player can't pass through, and refresh the jump when stood on

obstacles - objects in the level that the player can't pass through and damage the player apon impact

enemies - obstacles that have some sort of movement pattern, or create objects that move in attempt to impede your progress

gravity - a constant force downwards that forces the player to stand on platforms to not fall

collectables - items throughout the level which are collected upon touching, usually can be traded for upgrades

goal - the goal is most of the time to simply arrive at a certain destination, usually found in the end of the level

Once you understand how restricting all these limitations are on the standard platformer, it becomes incredibly easy to just change, remove or subvert some of these "rules" and come up with a unique twist.

So let's try it! let's take a random "rule" and change it!

Lets for example take the jump. Like I wrote, every platformer jump goes up, eases in and out and then goes down, so what if we just change its arc to down, up and then down? Will it make for an interesting game? There might be something there, but i would rather try another idea...

Let's try the platforms, they are always solid objects, so what if we just remove their collision? Now we have an area that refreshes the players jump like a platform, but still allows the player to fall. So pretty much, we got an infinite jump zone! This might have been done before, but it can be a fun gimmick for a level. let's move on to the next.

Well... Enemies usually impede your progress, so what if we make them helpful instead? In this case what we would get is creatures or people that try to help you through the level! For me that sounds like a really cool idea!

What if we made the character not move through keys, but with the mouse? What if made the collectables not be collected when touched but when they reach a certain place, so you need to carry them around? What if we removed gravity, and the player needed to find their way to the floor to refresh their jump? What if we change the goal to survive some amount of time?

With this process it's much easier to think out of the box, and figure out what have been done before, and what haven't.

Obviously, coming up only with ideas for a certain genre will be limiting, and eventually youll have a hard time coming up with new ideas. you should try this approach on many genres and combine the ideas you come up with, and maybe even take a single game with a unique mechanic and write this mechanics components like this.

It should be said though, not every change will be successful or unique. Some changes or removals will result in something that has already been done, something that barely changes the formula or something that simply doesn't work. You still need to apply logic to the ideas you think of, and think for yourself if they are interesting, unique or good at all.

Most of your ideas from here will still probably won't be that amazing, but what this approach allows you to do is start generating ideas. Your job after it is to dig through them and pick the ones you want.

If you're reading this, thank you so much for taking the time to read my rambling; I really appreciate it. And lastly, if you have anything you would like to ask or add, I would love it if you did.