Three possible directions for my team’s game! We are focusing on some sort of storyline involving an excited intern who discovers strange things about the company they’ve started working for. I would like to evoke a bit of confusion and excitement.
- Intern at an extremely competitive and toxic company. Each level will consist of them interacting with a new coworker, and they learn details about them and decide whether or not to trust them. The intern will get betrayed at some point, and become more cutthroat and toxic, slowly becoming the type of person they hated when they started working there. Their ultimate goal will be to become the new boss and head of the company at the end. Combination of embedded and enacting stories, as information is uncovered through dialogue, but there are ‘episodes’ and a progression of the game based on player decisions. The main kind of fun here is narrative, but also includes elements of fantasy as players get to step into a more evil role.
- Intern excited for a new job. Inspired by the new Willy Wonka movie, the intern signs a contract that they did not read and ends up stuck at this job (purgatory, essentially). They slowly realize that all of the other workers are stuck here too, and have been for years. The end goal is to discover what the company actually is and find a way to escape. This would be a combination of evocative and enacting stories; the environment will slowly become darker and more eerie and it is meant to play off of existing stereotypes of toxic workplaces, but more extreme. Narrative is again a central kind of fun here.
- No evilness involved–instead, the intern has a holiday party at the end of the week and was assigned to give a gift to their boss, who they never meet. The intern goes around the office, getting to know the other workers and slowly building a story of who the boss is and what they may like. They will select a gift at the end, and see how the boss reacts. More of an embedded narrative that is built through dialogue with characters, but with a climax at the end. Narrative is again a central kind of fun here, as well as discovery.
Mood inspirations (I was going for a seemingly positive and sunny vibe, then it slowly turns more creepy):
Game mood board: https://pin.it/6hn0ZEETk 
Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3oa94cKLdZgqUbPTui9jGQ?si=8lpOa0bvR5GivMcOZy8HDg&pi=u-8VbVlyVTRJq1 
