Synopsis
Our story will follow a scientist who returns late at night to her research station in the jungle after collecting samples all day. In the morning, the normally bustling camp full of early risers is quiet. First, she visits her closest friend’s house, finding him next to a ringing alarm clock.
As she explores the village, solving puzzles to get into locked sections (e.g., houses, chests, computers), she pieces together more and more of the story, collecting items and notes along the way. People are asleep at dining tables with cold food, near open laptops at their desks, and on the floor of the supply store. Suzanne, who has recurring dreams, keeps muttering in her sleep about them.
Our protagonist eventually unlocks the historian’s house, finding an open book and scribbled notes about an artifact and a folklore story about a curse that traps people in their dreams. If she doesn’t save her friends by sundown, they’ll be trapped forever.
To undo the curse, she needs to reconstruct the artifact and put it back in the temple. At this point, she will have unknowingly collected ~6/8 of the artifact pieces from exploring the camp already. When she gets to the temple level, she will trigger “booby traps”, so players will have real-life time pressure in the final level of the game.
The game takes place over the course of a day, starting in the morning and ending at sundown.
Tone
Our game should feel mysterious, eerie, and quietly urgent rather than outright scary. The tension comes from waking up in a research camp where everyone else is asleep and slowly realizing that something much larger and older is happening,
Tone wise, we want to balance three main feelings:
Curiosity: The player should want to explore because every room, object, and note feels like it could reveal another piece of the mystery. The camp starts off familiar and grounded, but small details like cold food, ringing alarm clocks, abandoned laptops, and people muttering in their sleep should make the player feel that something is wrong. This connects to our gameplay goal of using exploration, clues, and locked spaces to slowly reveal the story.
Unease: The game should not rely on gore or jump scares. Instead, it should create discomfort through isolation and uncertainty. The research camp is supposed to be full of life, so its sudden quietness should feel unnatural. As the player moves from the camp into the jungle and then into the temple, the tone should become more tense and dreamlike, especially as the player learns about the curse and the possibility that everyone could be trapped forever.
Wonder: Even though the game has eerie and cursed elements, the environment should still feel beautiful and immersive. We want the game to appeal to players looking for weird and beautiful new experiences, not just traditional horror fans. The jungle, ruins, artifacts, and dream imagery should make the player feel small in the face of something mysterious, but also motivated to keep exploring.
Overall, the tone should be atmospheric, suspenseful, and emotionally grounded. The player should feel like a scientist piercing together a mystery.
Gameplay
Currently, we are planning on gameplay to be most akin to 2D exploration/adventure games. Similar to many walking sims, we want the main mechanics of the game to be ‘point and click.’ Players should be allowed to freely move around each ‘level’ (the research camp, the surrounding jungle, the temple rooms) and be able to interact with many key items (inspecting a sleeping researcher, a puzzle in the temple room, or our friend’s open history book). Players will use the point and click mechanic to search for clues to progress through the game and the narrative. For example, some research buildings may be initially locked and will require a key or special action before proceeding.
We also want to include some analog portions to the game. Specifically, some puzzles will require players to peruse or tamper with provided real-world puzzles before proceeding. It could be a book that they must find a code in, or a short cipher or code that they will have to input into some console in the game in order to solve the puzzle and proceed. We were inspired by similar games that have mixed digital and analog such as Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, where one player must input codes into a digital interface while another helps solve the puzzles by reading a provided PDF. We want to employ a similar puzzle-solving style, but in a singleplayer adventure game. Many of these digital-analog mixed puzzles will likely be present during the latter Temple portion of the game.
In case puzzles are too difficult to understand at first, we also want to include a ‘hint’ mechanic into the game. Either players can use up a hint if they feel stuck (perhaps by interacting with the object that gave them the puzzle in the first place), or the game itself will track player actions and will try to nudge the player in the right direction if they seem lost.
Lastly, we plan for the game to be in 2D, likely using pixel art. We felt that a 2D game is most feasible to produce a decent prototype in the few weeks that we have to complete P2, especially as most of our team members have little to no experience working with 3D modeling. We were partly inspired by other adventure 2D games like the Pokemon series, where players similarly can interact with the world around them as they enter and explore houses and rooms and new areas.
Key Challenges for Tech
A major tech challenge we will have to overcome is working with game engines. We will likely be using Godot as it offers easier support for beginners as well as a more straightforward approach to creating 2D games. However, our team has had little experience working with any game engines or creating code for a video game, which may make progress on our P2 project a bit slow. In addition, Godot doesn’t have as much community support as other engines such as Unity because it is relatively newer. Even so, we are all very enthusiastic about learning how to navigate game engines, and we will be in close contact with our CA to ensure a smooth process!
Setting
The game takes place in a remote archaeological research camp deep within a dense, tropical jungle. The camp sits at the edge of an unexplored region that is close enough to civilization to feel grounded in reality, but far enough removed that it exists in a kind of isolation. The surrounding jungle is vast, layered, and difficult to navigate. At its center lies a temple that holds the source of the curse.
As part of our focus on discovery and exploration, the setting is not just a backdrop but an active participant in the experience. Rather than serving as passive backdrops, these environments are designed to conceal information, embed puzzles, and gradually teach the player how to see and interpret the world. At the same time, the jungle and ruins hint at something much older and less understood, creating a contrast between the familiarity of the camp and the mystery beyond it.
Across all three spaces, the setting is designed to show the player that the world itself is a puzzle. Exploration is not just about moving through space, but about learning how to interpret it. By embedding puzzles directly into the setting, the game creates a continuous sense of discovery, where players must think critically to search for meaning in their surroundings.
Audience
Our game is for players who enjoy exploration, mystery, and puzzle-solving more than combat or fast action. The ideal audience includes people who like point and click adventures, escape rooms, walking simulators, and narrative puzzle games where the story is uncovered through the environment. Since our gameplay is based on freely exploring levels, interacting with objects, collecting clues, and solving digital and analog puzzles, the game would appeal most to players who enjoy paying attention to details and thinking through clues.
A puzzle game can be frustrating if players feel lost for too long. Some people enjoy difficult codes and hidden clues, while others may stop playing if they do not know what to do next. That is why our game is designed around exploration, gradual discovery, and hints that feel naturally built into the world. Players should feel curious and challenged, not completely stuck.
A game like ours can give players the feeling of uncovering a secret inside a living world. By combining digital exploration with analog puzzle-solving, the game can offer a memorable experience for players who enjoy mystery, atmosphere, and hands-on discovery.
Key Challenges for Design
Maintaining cohesion between digital and analog systems. Since our game spans both digital and analog interactions, there is a risk that these two layers feel disconnected. The challenge is to design both systems so that they reinforce each other and information flows naturally between them. We want both parts to be used together, rather than in isolation, so their actions and purposes should build off each other. It should also be extremely clear when the gameplay transitions between digital and analog components.
Giving hints and guidance. Our game relies on players discovering clues and solving puzzles, which could cause frustration and abandonment of the game if progress becomes too slow. Therefore, we must design an effective hint system that balances player exploration with assistance when progress slows. The challenge is to provide this support without breaking the immersive experience of the game. We hope to accomplish this by integrating hints directly into the world through environmental cues and subtle nudges so that guidance feels like a natural part of the experience.
Pacing progression and transitions across spaces. The transition from the camp to the jungle and then the temple requires each space to build on the last. We hope to use these settings to guide our level design, but there is a risk they feel too segmented and do not flow cohesively with each other. We want to gradually increase complexity with each new setting, reinforcing the player’s growing understanding of the world and the storyline.
Key Challenges for Art
Art is going to be tricky for this game because we have to make a hybrid world feel cohesive across both digital and physical pieces. We need the jungle setting to feel dense, mysterious, and a little eerie, but still readable enough that players can actually interact with it. That balance might be difficult, especially if we include lots of foliage, layered depth, and small environmental clues.
We are not totally sure yet if 2D pixel art or a more traditional illustrated style will work better. Pixel art could make asset production faster and more consistent, especially if we use AI to help create assets or pull from an existing asset bank like the image shown, but it might limit how expressive we can get with things like the curse or subtle environmental storytelling. A more detailed style could look really nice and immersive, but it will probably take way more time and make it harder to keep everything consistent across rooms and assets.
The amount of assets, given the setting, is also quite large. We need sprites for characters, plus unique art for each room, object, and clue. Even small objects might need distinct designs so players can tell what matters.
On top of that, we have to think about how the digital visuals match any physical components. If we include printed clues, maps, or notes, they need to feel like they belong in the same world as the in-game art. I think consistency across all of this will be one of the hardest parts, especially while we are still figuring out our style.
Media References
Appendix
Link your personal concept post below!
- Elisabeth: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2026/05/03/individual-concept-doc-6/
- Matthew: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2026/05/05/p2-concept-doc-individual-2/
- Sarah: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2026/05/05/individual-concept-doc-sarah/
- Aanika: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2026/05/03/individual-concept-doc-p2-7/
