Mood Board

Spotify Playlist

 

Three Directions

The core stays the same in all three: 2D platformer, tight movement, jumping, dashing, avoiding hazards, dodging enemies. What changes is the story, the protagonist, and small mechanics. 

Concept A – Bring Back the Axe

A Stanford undergrad decides Cal has held the Axe long enough. Big Game is in three days. They’re going to get it back themselves. The player starts at the Dish on a Tuesday afternoon, where a sketchy older alum hands them a half-burned map and a pep talk. The map points through the Quad, down into the campus tunnels, and out somewhere underneath Memorial Stadium in Berkeley.

The journey is four acts and roughly fifteen levels. The Dish is the warmup — running, jumping, learning how the player character moves. The Quad is where things get harder, with rooftop platforming across sandstone buildings and band members who’ll catch you and drag you back to start if you fall into the wrong courtyard. The tunnels are the puzzle act where you navigate steam vents and locked doors with keycards. Cal stadium is the final gauntlet with floodlights, defenders patrolling the field in formation, a final climb up to the trophy case.

The narrative is delivered through short text fragments at the start of each level. By the time the player reaches Cal, the journal entries have shifted from cocky to determined to a little scared. The ending is the protagonist holding the Axe up at the 50-yard line at sunset.

MDA

• Challenge: The platforming difficulty curves up steadily, and the final escape with the Axe forces the player to rethink everything they’ve learned.
• Narrative: A clear journey with a clear goal. The player is rooting for the protagonist by the end.
• Fellowship: The school-spirit angle invites players who know Stanford to share inside references with each other.

 

Concept B – Stop the Experiment

The player is a grad student in psychology working late one night when they pick up a strange transmission on their lab equipment. Following the signal, they end up at the Dish at 2am. Something is broadcasting from underground.

The first level traces the signal across the Dish hills and finds a hidden access door behind a maintenance shed. Down the door is a stairwell and a tunnel. Downthe tunnel is the truth: the Stanford Prison Experiment never actually ended. Zimbardo shut down the public version in 1971, but a parallel program kept running, and it’s been operating in the campus tunnels ever since. The lab is somewhere down here, and the player has to find it and shut it down before they get caught.

The bulk of the game is the tunnels with levels of increasingly disturbing rooms. The further the player goes, the more recent the equipment looks. By the final level, the lab is fully modern and someone is still there. Lab guards in plain clothes patrol set routes and check rooms on timers. They have small flashlight cones the player has to avoid. 

The story is told entirely through what the player finds: typed reports, audio cassettes, photographs, a rolodex of names that includes people the player has heard of. The ending is the player triggering the lab’s emergency shutdown protocol and escaping back to the surface. The world above continues like nothing happened.

MDA

• Challenge: Platforming plus stealth pattern recognition. Players have to learn guard routes and time their movements through dangerous rooms.
• Discovery: The horror reveals itself slowly through documents, audio, and environmental detail. Players who explore thoroughly find the most.
• Narrative: The Stanford Prison Experiment is a real thing players can look up, which makes the fictional extension hit harder.

Concept C – The Campus Ghost

The player wakes up at the Dish at night with no memory. They look down and realize they can see through their hands. They’re a ghost. Something is pulling them westward, across the campus and down into the tunnels. The further they go, the more they start to remember.

The Dish is where the ghost wakes up and gets their bearings. The Arboretum is a quiet middle section where the ghost watches living students pass through and tries to remember if any of them look familiar. Encina Hall is where the ghost finds a memory fragment that suggests they were a student here. The tunnels are where the ghost learns they died down there, but the question is how. Memorial Church at dawn is the final act, where the ghost remembers everything and has to decide what to do about it.

The player picks up small flashes of memory throughout each level, which piece together into the story of who the protagonist was, how they died, and why they got stuck. The ending depends on whether the player collected enough fragments to fully remember. 

MDA

• Discovery: The collectible memory fragments turn every level into a search. Players who explore thoroughly are rewarded with more story.

• Narrative: The protagonist’s identity is the central mystery, and the player builds it themselves through what they find.