![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Rosewood Cottage
Sep. 18th, 2017 07:05 amSo I was readin' my twitter a bit ago and I happened to see a post by XyzzySqrl about some alternative box art for Rosewood Cottage, a video game that came out a while back. I thought it was really good since it captured the real essence of the game and not the false expectation I had for the game.
See, when I first heard about Rosewood Cottage, I was under the impression it was a game about living in a village of cute animal folks, sort of like Animal Crossing I guess. Well, I ended up looking up the game since I had somehow forgotten to play it when it actually came out, and it was completely different than I expected. It was actually a lot like Okami, this beautiful nature game where you play a young man who inherited a debt to the magical aniamls of the forest and has to go on an adventure to help them. It all starts out with having to get to the will of your deceased relative to prove your ownership of Rosewood Cottage before the villan, a sort of Snidely Whiplash type, gets to it.
Anyways it wasn't long after that when I woke up. This whole thing was a dream, and there was no game named Rosewood Cottage and XyzzySqrl's twitter had a guest appearance in my nightly show. It's especially interesting because I had this intense feeling of Deja Vu, like I had dreamed this dream before but different, which was why I had remembered hearing about Rosewood Cottage before and missed playing it. Deja Vu usually manifests for me like a 'precognitive dream', where I suddenly remember everything happening to me in the moment having happened in a dream in the past. I've heard this happens to other people too, though, and that it's a twist of your memory system trying to find where this false second memory goes and finding the most reasonable spot to say it comes from. A dream.
Anyways it's all a bit inspiring. Both ideas are actually really good ideas for games, the disappointed it wasn't game and the it actually was game.
The game I thought it was at first was only a bit like Animal Crossing. It wasn't really like any game I've ever played. It'd be easier to compare it to childrens shows like Rupert and Maple Town and a dozen similar japanese 80's childrens anime, and the Wind in the Willows. The whole genre of happy animal neighbors living together peacefully.
It reminded me that I really wanted to create a world like Rupert's, with a facade of normalcy surrounded by bizzare magical realism, but with a wholesome core of friendship between animal villagers.
The other game was pretty cool too. It was very stylized, and at one point in the dream I was in my brother's room playing it and the god rays from the game outshone the real sun. It was pretty weird. Anyways the idea of inheriting a magical debt is really clever, and I'm happy to have dreamed it up. You go into this quaint grove where your inheritance, the Rosewood Manor is, and encounter a mob of magical animals who demand that you help them where your ancestor failed.
That's a really good story prompt even for things outside of video games.
Anyways I just got out of bed to write this 'cause it was so bloody interesting, but now I'm going to get about my day. Thank you for reading!
See, when I first heard about Rosewood Cottage, I was under the impression it was a game about living in a village of cute animal folks, sort of like Animal Crossing I guess. Well, I ended up looking up the game since I had somehow forgotten to play it when it actually came out, and it was completely different than I expected. It was actually a lot like Okami, this beautiful nature game where you play a young man who inherited a debt to the magical aniamls of the forest and has to go on an adventure to help them. It all starts out with having to get to the will of your deceased relative to prove your ownership of Rosewood Cottage before the villan, a sort of Snidely Whiplash type, gets to it.
Anyways it wasn't long after that when I woke up. This whole thing was a dream, and there was no game named Rosewood Cottage and XyzzySqrl's twitter had a guest appearance in my nightly show. It's especially interesting because I had this intense feeling of Deja Vu, like I had dreamed this dream before but different, which was why I had remembered hearing about Rosewood Cottage before and missed playing it. Deja Vu usually manifests for me like a 'precognitive dream', where I suddenly remember everything happening to me in the moment having happened in a dream in the past. I've heard this happens to other people too, though, and that it's a twist of your memory system trying to find where this false second memory goes and finding the most reasonable spot to say it comes from. A dream.
Anyways it's all a bit inspiring. Both ideas are actually really good ideas for games, the disappointed it wasn't game and the it actually was game.
The game I thought it was at first was only a bit like Animal Crossing. It wasn't really like any game I've ever played. It'd be easier to compare it to childrens shows like Rupert and Maple Town and a dozen similar japanese 80's childrens anime, and the Wind in the Willows. The whole genre of happy animal neighbors living together peacefully.
It reminded me that I really wanted to create a world like Rupert's, with a facade of normalcy surrounded by bizzare magical realism, but with a wholesome core of friendship between animal villagers.
The other game was pretty cool too. It was very stylized, and at one point in the dream I was in my brother's room playing it and the god rays from the game outshone the real sun. It was pretty weird. Anyways the idea of inheriting a magical debt is really clever, and I'm happy to have dreamed it up. You go into this quaint grove where your inheritance, the Rosewood Manor is, and encounter a mob of magical animals who demand that you help them where your ancestor failed.
That's a really good story prompt even for things outside of video games.
Anyways I just got out of bed to write this 'cause it was so bloody interesting, but now I'm going to get about my day. Thank you for reading!
