The Siblings do: Flower!

Flower.
by Thatgamecompany.


 'It's not quite reality because petals wouldn't be able to do that but it shows people can.' Phoebe (10 years old)


What is the Siblings do?
The Siblings do is a little exploration. I will be presenting three of my younger siblings aged 8, 10 and 11 with a variety of games for them to play and discuss, what they say about these games I will record and type up here. I will be questioning them to stimulate conversation but apart from that this is all them without prompt, originally this was just a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon with my brothers and sisters and it very much still is.

I should explain how this came about. I am the eldest of eight brothers and sisters and the youngest three are avid game players and have been most of their lives, as an 'in-training' game designer they are my perfect little play testing team and the first place I go with my ideas. Like most children their age they have fascinating and often fantastical ideas not yet stifled by age.

I had started to notice that despite their open minded nature to games they often played very specific types of game. When I asked my eight year old brother what he thought games must have in order to be fun he worryingly replied guns.So with this in mind I'm now starting The Siblings do!

Me 25 years old
Max 11 years old
Phoebe 10 years old
Callum 8 years old


What do you think this game is about?

11 Max. It's about how, like, one little petal can change the world.
10, Phoebe. It's about making things better.
8 Callum. It's about saving more flowers to make more flowers and then that makes it more beautiful.

How does the game make you feel.

Max. Relaxed, Instead of being there with a controller I felt in the game.
Callum. Upset.

(Interestingly whereas max and phoebe talked about how beautiful the game looked and felt Callum focused on the controls and became frustrated quickly, he continually mentioned his own experience in contrast to the others as if it were a competition)

What's your favourite bit of the game?

Phoebe. I like the colors, they're bright, not like brown and I like the sound too, like the grass rustling.
Max. I like how the sound makes me feel different.

Did you enjoy the game?
Callum. I liked it. It gets dark. I like how it's nice and the music, it goes with the the game, it goes with the game. I like it when it's dark, it shows out the plants a lot more better.


I asked why they thought in between the levels a city is shown and how this made them feel?

Phoebe. It's very busy, it makes me feel busy.
Max. It shows that were so packed and busy in our own things...
Phoebe. Yeah, that we don't notice, like, all the beautiful things.
Callum. She stole my answer, I was going to say that.


What do you think your character is doing within the game?
Phoebe making the world a better place.
Callum. (Sighs loudly) I was going to say that. I like the way as you get the petals the wheat it's growing on goes away, because it brings grass out, so it brings more flowers out, to make more beautiful fields.
Max. It's showing people that if you did something you can make nature a better place and like, not ruined by machines.
Phoebe. I think it's showing how people must help the flowers. Because people who cut down trees are ruining the environment. The world will be all dark.
Callum. And we'll all die. (Pause) because there's no oxygen.


Can you give it a score out of five and tell me why?

Phoebe 5/5 well, I think it's a five because it brings out your emotions and if you care for the environment..
Callum. Care for the world.
Phoebe, it's not quite reality because petals wouldn't be able to do that but it shows people can.
Max 5/5 it really brings out the emotion in you. It shows machinery can really hurt nature.
Sam. Did you learn anything from playing it?
Max. Even if your a small thing you can make a big difference.
Callum 3/5 because 5/5 is making it beautiful, but it's not always beautiful, sometimes it looks bad. I like it more beautiful as it could possibly be in the world. They've turned stuff evil.

Have any of your friends play this game.

Max. (Silence) shakes his head
Callum no
Phoebe no

Would you like to show your friends Flower?
Phoebe yes
Max yeah, I guess I would
Callum I would, I'd like to show girls, at my table, girls like flowers so they'll like it.

Why do you think you have machinery in the game that hurts you?

Callum (umm...)
Max because like, you need something against you.

Some sort of adversity?
Max yeah.

New peoples and places.

What a long time since I last blogged! There has been a big transition period as I ended University at South Wales and began my MA at the NFTS school in Beaconsfield. but hopefully this blog will be back on track with more bits and pieces I cobble together, in the mean time here's whats been going on.

~

I was honored to receive a Prince William Scholarship.

and proud to be a part of Warner Brothers Creative Talent

(Here's the lovely bunch all together)

I joined the NFTS Games Design and Development course.

(Here's all three years of the course together)

and met my BAFTA mentor Imre Jele head of Bossa studios,

and I also Did a little adventuring.


Lots has Happened and lots is happening, I'll hopefully be blogging as usual again now so expect Games, Sketches and little stories, Business as usual.
~
S

‘the oldest and strongest kind of fear’ Flash Fiction Competition entry #3

(The rules state to use the picture and caption to create a short story of 150 words with a margin of five if you eat over.)

The caption was delectable dimension/s

and my story...

‘the oldest and strongest kind of fear’'

(A Homage to Howard Lovecraft)

by Sam Coleman

151 words.

@indigo_sam

He had stood euphoric before them, his hands frenzied with his mastery of moving his music. 

It began with the strings, it had seemed to him that something repulsive whispered in the viola and the harp. Then the build, the flurry, he heard it laugh in the woodwind and roar in the drum, he was unable to stop himself, caught like his audience in the rapture of the song, consumed in the repugnant beauty of each traitorous note. The great worm twisted and writhed within the very beat of his work, from what delectable dimension of horror and allure did his talent stem?

As the brass peaked in crescendo the answer came and his eyes opened to the true conductor, the composer of all men, he trembled realising the crimson curtains would never close again for him and he whispered in a voice not his own 

‘The Shew must go on’


My short story submission for the

56th #SatSunTails #Microfiction #Competition!linked here.

Short Story Submission #2 ''Matriarch''

(The rules state to use the picture and caption to create a short story of 150 words with a margin of five if you eat over.This story won first prize)

The caption was Scraping back skin.
The picture:

                                    

and my story...

‘‘Matriarch’’

Sam Coleman

150 words.

@indigo_sam

The old house squats betwixt the pines, her dust covered windows concealing within like eyes milky with cataracts.

The furniture was covered in plastic as I started to scrape back her skin. A cream coloured layer with a brown interweaving pattern came first, it matched the furniture. Next a royal blue pattern against white. The bright astronaut decoration of a child’s room gave way to a foul mustard coloured floral pattern. Again and again I peeled back her coloured chameleon flesh and as I did I pulled back the veil from her past until I stripped her down to her archaic wooden bones. A large brown stain spotted the wall, that familiar iron pungency, almost sweet. The horror welled up within me and broke into screams as the sea breaks upon the shore and I knew then, I was looking upon her face.

The old house squats betwixt the pines.

My short story submission for the

55th #SatSunTails #Microfiction #Competition!

Linked here.

Short Story Submission.

(The rules stated to use the picture and caption to create a short story of 150 words with a margin of five if you ate over, which I did)

The caption was Sibling Rivalry
The picture:

and my story...

Apple.

~

They met upon the crest of the hill in the shade of a great apple tree overlooking the sea. Lilith moved up beside the old woman wearing a similar aged human form herself. A sign of respect or mockery, it mattered little now.

‘I never truly believed he had died all those years ago and to think the world will remember him aged only to 930’

Lilith tapped her old human nose with a finger ‘We know better’

‘I take it you come here for vengeance’ she spoke softly.

Lilith was silent a while looking down upon the grave.

‘My revenge died with him, we were never enemies you and I, rivals perhaps’ she smiled ‘I came to say it is done between us now sister’

She stayed beside his grave long after Lilith left faithful wife that she was and deep within the apple tree even a serpent bowed its head in respect.

Sam Coleman

154 words. 

@indigo_sam


My short story submission for the

54th #SatSunTails #Microfiction #Competition!

Linked here.

CR42 film.

Evidence I once acted in a short film. The crew who made this were fantastic! 

You can see the whole short film here.

Happy 123rd Birthday H.P Lovecraft.

The Fae.

Portraits of some of my Fae characters from a book I'm writing.

First Comic- Swansong.

Hey!

Been pretty busy recently with a few new projects, one of them being to try my hand at creating and publishing a comic which has always been on my life tick-list of things to do.

So here it is! Its called Swansong.

Synopsis

In a future poisoned with beautiful incandescent radioactive storms one dying genetically enhanced superhuman reflects on the shaping of his life.

In an alternate future in which the Cold War escalated into a world war the world has been transformed into a storm covered wasteland with large shielded cities keeping the remaining population safe after a powerful new weapon ravaged the atmosphere.

The Cold War did not end with the destruction of large parts of the habitable world and now America works hard to develop genetically enhanced super humans to assassinate key Russian officials. The story is told through the reflective thoughts of one of these dying superhuman war machines. I'm writing it with my good friend Max Perkins working on the art. You can find Maxs blog here.