Chaotic Mario

Your inspiration: What time, place, activity or memory from your past inspired you to make this game? What makes this particular inspiration meaningful to you? 

When I was around 10 years old, I received my very first birthday gift from my Dad. My family isn’t big on presents, its usually just a dinner and a cake so when my dad handed me a pink DS, you can only imagine my excitement and surprise. From that day on, I was immersed in the world of Mario because it was the only game that I had, and I didn’t have social media or a computer. It was either watching TV or playing my DS and of course, I chose my DS. I loved Mario, I would sometimes pretend I’m Princess Peach, just waiting for someone to come sweep me off my feet. It was a mix of fairytale stories and my wild imagination. Just two weeks ago in the present time, my boyfriend randomly bought me a LEGO 71374 Nintendo Entertainment System Super Mario Lego set which can be seen in my game. It had 2646 pieces and it took me around 6 hours non-stop to complete it. It brought me back to my childhood, that ecstatic feeling of receiving a gift for the very first time and it made me forget about all the stress I was feeling, it made me feel like a kid again.

Your game: How did you turn this inspiration into an interactive virtual world? Be specific about how particular aspects of your game--textures, objects, the map/layout, the skybox, text interaction, animations, sound--tell a story that the player can experience and interact with?

When I first sat down to create my virtual world, it was important to me to create a feeling of nostalgia. When I was first introduced to Mario, I played a lot especially at night, it was my stress reliever after a long day of school. Using that notion, I wanted to create a nighttime sky and encapsulate my entire world into it. Mario usually features the daytime, but I wanted to add a twist into the world we all are used to seeing. To further encapsulate the player into the world, I made a wall of Mario characters from Uno cards. When you’re in that space, you are surrounded by Mario characters, it quite literally is your world and that’s exactly how I used to feel when I played as a child. I also wanted the player to interact with all those characters because they were essentially my “friends” as a kid, so I placed all of them in the forest each saying their catchphrases. I feel that the catchphrases add to that nostalgic feeling because you associate certain characters with certain sayings and it just hits you, like Mario saying, “It’s a-me, Mario!”. I don’t even need to include his voice and you can already hear what he sounds like.