Digital Museum — Ocean of Giants

Like the other game I talk about, but less ambitious

So as planned, this will be the last part of the “Digital Museum” series of articles for the foreseeable future, as in a notion that might change at a moment’s notice. If I see it fit, I’ll be sure to expand out of the series simply because it’s not enough, kind of how they did with the sequel trilogy of Star Wars.

Let me just make a quick recap: I talked about the aspect of flamboyant visuals in video games and well-made choreography. I then went on to describe a genre based on the premise of simply watching as many flashy supermoves as possible. I dubbed this genre “Digital Museum”. However, what I probably didn’t mention is that I also consider other names since it’s all just tentative, like “spectacle game” or “visual game” or something like that (if you have any suggestions, go ahead). I also cited some inspirations for this idea, namely fighting games, since that’s where it is most present.

All of these principles for this supposed genre, I collected into one place and envisioned a video game that I call “Blade Helix”, the story of which I still haven’t described. I described how troublesome the production of such a game might be, from the astronomical budget to all the creative differences that would get in the way (I haven’t actually talked about the latter… but I should have!). But this time, I want to describe an idea that’s on a smaller scope, albeit with the same amount of things to look at, and that number is 200. This other Digital Museum of mine, I call Ocean of Giants.

So what is this… Ocean of Giants?

As a start, Ocean of Giants is a Digital Museum, just like Blade Helix, but on a whole smaller scale (as said previously). I know that Unity is popular in the indie scene today, so it could probably be made with that if it isn’t too heavy to be a Flash game. I barely know jack about game engines, but Ocean of Giants is a 2d game.

As the name may or may not imply, you play as a submarine in a vast ocean filled with massive leviathans, and your only task… is to swim in whichever direction you please. All you have to do is browse the ocean as the submarine moves across different altitudes, doing nothing but being a submarine. Until… a giant face breaks your peace by how gargantuan his teeth are (they get even scarier in the abyss). Of course, at first, people would just assume that there are like 7 leviathans, so it’s probably like a 20-minute experience, so it’s not really worth it. But there aren’t 7; there are 200.

Why 200? Because that’s a lot, and it would give people a reason to keep exploring the vast ocean, and now it sounds more like a 20-hour experience. And that’s pretty much it for the description of the game since there’s nothing more to it. No story, no challenges, no nothing. It’s only ever meant to deliver on what a Digital Museum should be. But the notion of coming across an elongated monster with a menacing grimace and a giant eye that won’t stop following you as you’re deep in a blue nothingness is more or less what a Digital Museum strives to get players to be excited about: the discovery of something new!

At this point, everybody knows what the problems are

First off, I’m aware that this game bears a striking resemblance to the acclaimed Subnautica, simply because the game itself is associated with finding leviathans in the ocean (and then get eaten by them). But Ocean of Giants only has the leviathans, albeit in a huge quantity, while Subnautica is far more than that. So that argument is out the window.

And then there’s the usual problem that is the scope. Although, by design, the game sacrifices all aspects just to have so many giant fishes to discover, I still can’t properly assess how much the budget would be, so I’m not entirely sure that this would have the scope of an indie game.

And then there’s that one other problem that is the question of whether or not people would actually be interested in something like this. In the first parts of this series, I discussed why people go to museums to look at stuff when they can see the same stuff on the Internet for no effort whatsoever. My point is, I already had this discussion, and the only logical conclusion that I came to was that I wouldn’t know unless it actually happens… which is never.

Still no questions ☹

Well, the problems are presented above. I already came up with solutions by myself, but I by myself isn’t enough. As I said before, unless I receive feedback on the Digital Museum, I won’t be perfect. So once more, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

In Conclusion…

So this has been the last article in the “Digital Museum” series of articles. Although it has been fun vaguely describing this ambiguous idea for a new genre of video games (would’ve been better if I got questions). Next time, I’ll be sure to go back to the usual format of language-based articles that somehow relate to video games, or any convention of modern recreational activity, for that matter. I want to write something about K’iche, but I don’t know where to start.

In any case, that was Ocean of Giants, a game (if you can call it that) where you do nothing but look for giant fish faces to look at, and there are a lot of ‘em! In some sense, it’s basically a walking simulator but with a different flavour (kind of how like when you go to the ice cream parlour but you feel like having ice cream, so you have a milkshake instead), and those are a thing so hopefully Digital Museums can too.

And with that, I put an indefinite end to the series. Have a good night, folks.