Our team decided to work on the topic of escaping from a psychopath hospital.
Moodboard:
Emotions: scary, ironic, trapped
Directions of the game:
The game takes place in a psychopath hospital maybe in an ironical setting where all the patients are sober when entering the hospital and the hospital brainwashes them to make money. There are three directions that I think of:
- The first idea combines the hospital setting with the time machine in a pure cooperation setting. The two players play the role of the same patient but one in the past/now and the other in the future, and they need to escape the hospital together to truly escape from the hospital. They are given the same map of the hospital but the items in the hospital might be different due to the time. They have clues about what each other needs to unlock doors, avoid encountering doctors, etc. For example, the patient in the future will find clues about bad things that happened if the patient in the past says or interacts with some specific NPC, while the patient in the past can find the secret paths to exit, which are hidden in the future.
- The fun will be more around fellowship and challenge, where the two players collaborate with each other (such as describing the clues they have in words without seeing each other’s clues) to escape the hospital by solving challenging puzzles.
- The narrative will be an emergent narrative where there is not a pre-structured story and the patients are just trying to escape together.
- There is a “real” patient and an FBI agent acting like a patient to uncover the truth behind the hospital. This could be a combination of cooperation or players playing against each other. The FBI agent was sent to the hospital to investigate whether the hospital was making money from innocent patients by brainwashing them into psychopaths and discovered such a patient in the process of brainwashing. So, the agent needs to collect evidence, including the patient, to uncover the bad things that the hospital did. The patients will follow the agent’s instructions to find the way to escape, but he/she can do something else to let others realize that the agent is not a true doctor, in the later part of the game when the brainwashing process is successful (where the patient player will also find the art style to become cozy, e.g. like Stardew Valley), and the patients become a bad character. It is also considerable to enable the agent player to turn in or leave without the patient player when he/she finds the patient is already brainwashed.
- The fun could also be fellowship and challenge (might combine some of the competition), besides cooperation and puzzles, the players might face competition from each other (e.g. maybe give each other incorrect clues to let them be discovered and fail the escape).
- It will be the emergent narrative for the player who plays as a patient with no pre-structured stories. It might be embedded narratives for the agent player where he/she gradually discovers the story behind the hospital (e.g. how the hospital makes money from brainwashing the normal patients and deceiving the society).
- There is only one player who plays as a brainwashed patient where he/she sharts in a cozy scene (e.g. Stardew Valley style) but is locked in the room and corridor of the hospital. He/she wants to find the way out and needs to solve puzzles and talk to different NPCs to find out clues. However, gradually, the player will find the scene where the environment becomes like a prison, dark, and scary. This mimics the process where the patient gradually becomes sober and realizes where he/she truly is. Finally, the patient would be able to escape after solving all the puzzles to find the way out or be locked eternally in the hospital.
- The fun will majorly from the challenge and hopefully sense pleasure with the varying art styles.
- The narrative would be an Embedded narrative where the patient gradually finds what’s happening to himself/herself, and also the story of the hospital when gradually becomes sober.
Spotify Playlist:
