Moodboard
Music
Art from Disco Elysium, Dishonored, and Deathloop
Theme, Story, and Setting I’d like to pursue
Player plays as a single or a group of police detectives in a dystopian Noir city with magical realism elements.
Rising Action: The detective(s) investigate increasingly impossible crime scenes. E.g. drowning in a desert, fall from lethal height in a locked bedroom.
Climax/Twist: The detective(s) discover that there is a parallel reality with a utopian version of the city creeping into their reality.
Resolution: The detective(s) have to decided whether to allow this utopian city to take over their own, or reject it in favor of their own worse reality that they call home.
Possible Directions
- Interactive Fiction with party mechanics. The player controls a squad of 3-4 detectives, each with HIDDEN attributes (strength, intelligence, charisma). During the game, the player is presented with choices of who to send in order to accomplish a task (e.g. break open the lock), and the player has to identify each character’s strengths and weaknesses from observing their dialogue and actions. This offers the fun of fantasy, narrative, challenge, and discovery.
- Pure Text-Based Interactive Fiction with one character. This is probably the most straight forward to develop for, and it still offers the fun of fantasy and narrative, but perhaps a bit less challenge and discovery.
- Disco Elysium-esque point and click adventure. Compared to pure IF, this approach is certainly more immersive, and thus offers stronger funs of fantasy and maybe even expression. However, scoping is a real concern with this approach.
