Hook
You cannot answer.
You are an unnamed spirit in a vast Forest. You know nothing of yourself nor how you got here, but — there is something you must do.
Synopsis
You are a spirit. You awaken surrounded by other spirits, wandering about with no intentions to do anything or go anywhere. You do not know who you are nor why you are here in the Forest, but you know you have a goal that the others do not— to collect the pieces of the human you are tied to in the Real World.
As you move through the Forest, you find soul shards — pieces of memory from the human you are tethered to in the Real World. Picking these soul shards up will burden you (through stress inducing sound, slowed movement speed, or some other kind of play nerf) and immediately transport you into the Abyss where you must solve a thematically relevant puzzle to cleanse the shard and thus the memory for your human.
The game ends once you have collected all 7 (subject to change) shards. At this point, the games ending sequence is triggered. The screen slowly fades to white and asks players to answer the same question they were posed with at the beginning of the game, “Do you know who you are?” (we’re keeping this pretty vague for now but as the narrative fleshes out around the human in the real world, it should make more sense)
Tone
This game is an allegory for the aftermath of hardship. It asks the player to fill in and think about the fragmented story of a broken person, the experiences that destroyed them, and the thorny rocky path that they must travel to heal. It is slow, thoughtful, and tense; eerie, and a bit mysterious; at the same time as it is beautiful and reverent.
We create this feeling by focusing in on three core feelings:
Lonely. Someone is missing. You are alone, or mostly alone, or alone in every way that matters; the player knows not what happened nor who their avatar is, and perhaps they don’t even know who they are nor do they seem to care. By collecting soul shards, they capture glimpses into someone else’s life, and that longing for connection drives the player’s hunger for more– even at the cost of their avatar’s wellbeing.
Questioning. The player will have a way forward, but should they take it? What is right or best? Are there alternate paths? And if not… what does that mean for them? Perhaps some things can never be truly healed, or maybe you’ll regret looking for things in the first place…
Eerie. We want the player to feel a certain kind of unsettled dissonance that forces them to reconcile and consider the elements of our fragmentary narrative in a personal, perhaps vulnerable way. This feeling should follow them through the Forest and become more and more unsettling as they reach the Abyss. We want this eerieness to follow the player once they leave the game, inviting them into nuance and into consideration of the healing process; ideally, increasing and building empathy for others in the process.
Visual Aesthetic
Our visuals will primarily feature crayon/pastel styled simple drawings as opposed to high definition maximalism, and will take place in a generally 2D environment. Alongside this visual style, we will also add in real life photos and objects to create the connection to the real world while also creating dissonance through the juxtaposition of these two contrasting elements. We draw on inspirations from games like OMORI, Chicory, and Undertale.
Setting
The game will be split between two primary ‘realms’ with a third realm that is relevant to the story.
- The Forest
- This is the primary realm that you inhabit as the character — it is liminal, purgatory-esque space. Littered throughout the forest are small notes and items that may invoke past memories, as well as soul shards, which are to be collected by the character.
- The Abyss
- The abyss is the darker, more painful realm that contains puzzles to be solved by the player in order to cleanse the soul shards. The abyss is a shadow mirror of the Forest and features messier visuals that draw from more horror-esque elements.
- The Real World
- The human who is tethered to you exists in this world. We never travel here but are given glimpses of it through the soul shards collected.
Gameplay
Our core gameplay revolves around the discovery of new locations and “soul shards” as the player explores an eerie, sidescrolling forest, and the solving of puzzles that explore the underlying narrative of the horror-inspired Abyss.
Soul Shards mark the transition between the discovery-focused and narrative-focused parts of the game.
In the Forest, the player is able to explore an eerie but pretty world. They can move as you might expect in a sidescrolling platformer, or they can simply click to navigate. In searching and exploring the forest, the player can interact with items, fragments of memories, the occasional other character, and with Soul Shards. In this way, they start to build a cursory and fragmentary understanding of one, maybe more, character(s) and their lives. Most of these are optional; players can complete small puzzles involving the spirit mechanics laid out below to find them and the main progression item: Soul Shards, fragments of someone’s soul shorn off in some kind of traumatic experience. They hold all the pain and hurt from the division and distance, yet also the moments of normalcy and even happiness that lead up to it (or that insidiously hide the pain/problem). When the player picks one up, they are immediately shown what information is there and transported to The Abyss.
In The Abyss, the player finds themselves in a stylized, perhaps horrifying corruption of the Forest they once knew, elements having been taken from the cleaved Soul Shard they picked up. Here, they must solve a related and thematically-relevant narrative puzzle using one of several mechanics that pull from a variety of game genres. At the end of every puzzle, the player is prompted to answer a question… but may not be able to answer.
Spirit Mechanics / Affordances
- Object Manipulation
- The player can pull words out of written pages they find on their path to Soul Shards. These words should be preset so that we do not have to expand our scope to the point where any word could be created in physical space. These written pages will be relevant to the Soul Shard that has to be cleansed, and give the player more context into how this burden affected the player’s human.
- This type of ability will most likely be used in puzzles found in the Forest, possibly in the Abyss. The player will have to figure out what page to pull from, and why exactly it’s needed to solve a puzzle.
- An example — pulling out a key from a page to open a locked door
- The player could also combine words from separate pages to formulate new objects.
- An example — if they had a page that produced an apple and another that produced a seed, they could produce an apple seed. These would have to carefully audited to make sure we cover possible combinations and not allow for weird ones
- The player may also be able to manipulate writing / objects using other tools like an eraser. There may be additional abilities that are introduced like drawing to create, editing the environment around them, erasing parts of words to create new ones, etc.
- Passthrough
- The player will be able to move through objects but must leave behind their inventory — you are alone in the new space.
- This helps us know and control what players have in certain puzzles.
Types of Puzzles / Gameplay
- Forest Puzzles — spatially focused, mostly driven by exploring the Forest and finding the lost shards and optional notes. These puzzles will capitalize on the ability of digital mediums’ ability to manipulate space
- Infinite loop — character steps through a doorway which triggers an infinite loop. The player must configure a combination of doors to escape this loop and discover a soul shard
- Item collection / sequencing — using notes littered throughout the forest, they may be able to use words found within those notes to conjure items / new entryways (think using the word “key” in a note someone finds to unlock a door)
- Breath simulator (celeste, or something similar)
- Abyss Puzzles — more cognitive, thematic/narrative, challenging, and genre-bending puzzles required to cleanse soul shards.
- Platformer – to cleanse one of the soul shards you have to continue falling down to “get to the root” of this struggle
- Avoid hostile enemies (stealth mode) – Something is chasing you in the abyss, players begin by running from these hostilities, but solution is somehow to stop and confront the enemy
- Bullet hell – use space to manipulate the environment in such a way that the bullets attack themselves, push shooting enemies into the plane?
- Decisions – the player has to make the “wrong choice” in order to proceed. The one that is more terrifying, the one that seems wrong…
Expected Challenges
Scope
- Exploration → lots of world
- Keeping the exploration feeling thematically relevant
Allegory
- Keeping it ~vague~ and not feeling like we’re hammering them over the head with it
- But not keeping it so vague that it’s completely intractable
- Making sure the narrative we do have is sensitive and accurate to people who have these kinds of experiences
Player agency
- Making sure the player feels like an engaged part of the story rather than simply watching a movie with extra steps
Intended Audience
This is a game for people looking to enter a foreign plane and solve puzzles while maintaining a sense of calm and contemplation as they reflect on what it means to heal. As a result, this game is catered toward an older audience that can both understand and relate to the pain of working through trauma and hardship. The games reliance on puzzles over action, and 2D sketch art over maximalism will also cater itself to an older audience—or at least one that is more comfortable with contemplation over combat.
Similar games: Undertale
Appendix
Individual team moodboards
