Synopsis:
Our game will be a 2D platformer about a character exploring an abandoned city with heavy elements of horror. The player will solve puzzles and interact with NPCs as he progresses through the game learning about what happened to the city.
Emotions:
Fear,
Anxiety,
Misery
Desperation
Anguish
We want our game to feel like the player is in constant desperation, loss of hope, and either being chased by an enemy all the time or feel that they cannot rest until they get to a checkpoint or safe area. We do not only want them to be stressed by the puzzles, but also trouble and feel curious about what happens next in our story (introducing cliffhangers) and interesting dynamics in dialogues.
Tones:
Our visual atmosphere would be ominous and dark and provide the feeling of being in a constant chase to instill a persistent sense of curiosity and anxiety in players. Our main inspiration comes, in part, from certain atmospheric backgrounds like Dark Souls and the sparse design of Limbo. In regard to color composition, we would like to explore watercolors paintings for backgrounds and hand-drawn assets for characters and items to then digitize them.
Setting: Dystopian city setting, institutional oppression and supervision everywhere. We want the players to feel insecure, panic, and thus to provoke their drive to escape and seek for hope in the rest of the game. Building, architecture, and map design should follow what an authoritarian nation would look like (unanimous, cold-blooded, concrete-like environment). NPCs should also be depicted as similar to each other and contribute to the depiction of the dystopian world.
Gameplay/Mechanics: The player can use WASD to move left and right as well as jump to explore the city. The player will also be able to pick up items or move objects to solve puzzles. Player will also be able to interact with NPCs or have short cut-scenes
References: Horrortale, OneShot, Little Misfortune, Little Nightmares, Fran Bow, Limbo, Dark Deception, Alice: Madness Returns, Disco Elysium, Kentucky Route Zero
Challenges:
Coding the game in Unity
Creating/finding models to use in the game. We want to go low poly to make this easier. How do we make the game low – poly without making it look too low quality.
Target Audience: Teenagers and young adults who enjoy horror between the ages of 15 – 21.
Art style
Developing art for a horror game that involves creating numerous assets across cars (each car is a whole different world which is aligned with the “infinity” theme of the game). We dont have so many experience in 3D modeling, so we are still exploring how to include the steam locomotive, tourism wagons, wheels, and adjacent wagon carriages. Besides that, we also need to design from zero: puzzle items, character sprites with animations, and create cut scenes in case of important story events.
One idea we liked in our discussions was the infinite train drafted by Mathias (see attached sketch). We might change or evolve this idea in the future, but for now we think we will build upon this idea to show our worldbuilding based on this “dystopian world”
