A story about a man named Row · 04 of 06

I Wish I Could Live in a Painting

我想住进一幅画里

An adventure into the world of a painting, where the end of that world turns out to be the real one.

Role
Writer · game designer
Genre
Puzzle · 3D
Emotional core
What a silly idea is worth in a life
Status
Full story coming soon

Story

Looking for the way in

Row, a young boy, loves a painting his mother keeps. He dreams that one day he will really live inside it.

So he leaves home with the painting and wanders, looking for places that match its scenery and searching for the way into the painted world.

Along the way, he jumps into every pond he passes and crosses bridges holding a lotus leaf. At last he gets his wish and reaches the far edge of the painted world.

There, the painting has become real, and his parents have become a painting.

In the end, he chooses to step into that other painting, and back into the real world.

Creative intent

What a silly idea is worth in a life

A painting is a moment held still.

Design concept

Everyone has a few silly ideas. They can’t come true. But it is exactly those impossible, unreachable silly ideas that keep me making myself, and the real world, better.

As an independent game designer, I want to build my ideal world through games: a world where everyone is encouraged to keep a few impossible, unreachable silly ideas. That is how the world gets better, and how we become better people who try harder. That is why I am making this game.

When the project is finished, I hope it reaches every player’s own painted world, so we can all share the joy of a silly idea.

Emotional analogy

Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is about an existential bind. A modern writer slips back into 1920s Paris and drinks with the writers he idolizes, only to find they don’t think they live in a golden age either. They long for an earlier one.

Everyone has a golden age they want to go back to. Row’s painting is his.

Questions behind the story

The metaphorWhy would someone want to live in a painting, and what is that a metaphor for? How is the painted world different from the real one? What happens to someone who lives forever inside their happiest moment, on a loop, and why would they choose it?
The personWhat kind of person wants to live in a painting? How are they treated when they say so out loud? What would they do to get there, and what would I do once I was inside?
The worldCan the painted world speak to a real social issue, and a specific group of people, so the game carries weight in the real world?

References

The Unfinished Swan
Giant Sparrow, 2012		The closest game. A boy follows the one unfinished painting his mother left behind into a blank white world, and reveals it by throwing ink.
China’s Van Goghs
documentary, 2016		A painter in Dafen, Shenzhen, who spent decades copying Van Gogh for the tourist trade, finally stands in front of the originals in Amsterdam. The distance between a copy and the real thing.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
film, 2019		Painting as memory: the gaze, the portrait that gets painted over, the image that outlives the moment.
Fu Lei
Twenty Lectures on World Masterpieces		Famous paintings with special meaning, and painters with unusual stories, especially stories about ideals and family.
Wu Hung
The Double Screen		What a frame means: how the edge of a picture separates one world from another.

Structure design

From the real world, back to the real world

The journey

The story is built as a journey with five stages. Each stage rests on an action the player performs: look, carry, jump, cross, step through. The journey ends where it began, in the real world.

StageWhat Row does
At homeLook at the painting, and wish.
The searchCarry the painting out and compare each place with its scenery.
Ponds and bridgesJump into ponds; cross bridges holding a lotus leaf.
The far edgeThe painting becomes real; his parents become a painting.
The way backStep into the other painting, and back into the real world.

Breaking down The Unfinished Swan

I took the game apart by level, gameplay, narrative and theme, then asked the same questions of my own project.

QuestionThe Unfinished SwanMy game
What is the swan?Beauty, a dream to chaseThe painting: a silly idea worth keeping
What is the ink?Ink makes an invisible world visibleOpen: what symbolizes the uncertainty of a dream?
What is the interaction?Throw, reveal, followSearch, tool, noun: a telescope, a net, a flashlight…

Mechanic directions

Painting as playHow do you paint, and with what? How does painting change from person to person, and with age? How can the act of painting become gameplay that is fun and meaningful?
PerspectiveChinese scattered perspective, where the view changes as you walk, against Western single-point perspective. When did painting first gain depth? What does the halo do in religious painting?
Art historyCan the journey into the painting travel through art history? Why do different styles and techniques appear, such as pointillism?
TimeTime slices, the order of events, the sun in the painting, time in the painting, the frozen moment, eternity, the instant.
The surfaceSweeping away, layering over, painting over, the hidden painting underneath.
MoodStillness, silence, emotion.

Controls

Which element of the game can replace the mouse, keyboard and controller? What in a painting can replace a controller’s vibration, and be turned into a verb?

Open narrative questions

The boyWho is he? What kind of family is he born into? What happens to him later in life? Who are his parents: their jobs, their ages, what they lived through when they were young?
The paintingIs it a Chinese painting or a Western one? Did his mother paint it, or his grandmother, though no one remembers why? Did the boy paint it himself? What does it show?
Darker versionsThe boy stays in his childhood memory because of an illness. Or, grown up and severely depressed, he is trapped somewhere in his memory and can’t return to the real world. Or he no longer remembers the painting, and a doctor uses it to treat him.
LegibilityHow abstract can the storytelling be, and will players still get it? How much detail should the painting hold?

Research status

GenreGameplayNarrativeArtControls
Puzzle · 3DIn researchIn researchIn researchIn research

Read

Coming soon

The full story is being rewritten and will be published here soon.

Reference: The Unfinished Swan, Chapter 4, “The King’s Dream” ↗

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