Story-boarding, in the beginning...

The game's story itself will start with our menu and a road side, burnt into the road will be the menu, and upon clicking start a van will zoom across the screen, this will then take us inside the van where the players eyes will slowly open to show you are bound and in the back of the van, the camera will then move to the eye of the driver who's identity is disclosed and upon looking into the mirror will show the player and credits. The camera will swap back to the player as his eyes close and the prologue ends.

This brings us to the actual game. The player will come too in the back of the now open van, cut free and gets out cinematically to find himself on a long empty road, beside a gas station.

The road is blocked from one side due to road works and the only light source is the lamp post outside the station (the lamps that are on in the world signify a point of interest which upon completion will turn off, in the van before leaving it will be the first collectible, a photo of two girls saying my angels.

Upon entering the station the player will find it is ransacked and dead, nothing of any use or speciality, when delving into the back room the player will find the next collectible, a news paper titled "Mayor struggles to shed light over Brighthaven" and a lighter. Upon leaving this room there will be a figure outside which when approached slightly the lamp will shit off and the figure will escape up the hill.

The player from any point had his own choices, he does not need to go to the station, he can take this path to town immediately, he can also make a right before the town to the house which concludes the game. However concluding the game so quickly will result in a different ending.

The more the player explores these points of interest, he will find more collectibles and witness more events which will make the final concluding scene more apparent and will extend the final scene to evaluate what you have found, this is because we dislike the fact that some games can be "speed-ran" or skipped/cheated, so were focusing on the effect that is, the more you put in the more you get out, so if you play the game 100% you'll understand it 100%, if you simply end it immediately, you'll be left puzzled why this happens, hopefully causing you to play again.

If the player continues up hill, they will not find the figure but a town square, with a scarecrow lit by a downed lamp post, approaching this will cause a quick cutscenes scare where the scarecrow will flash alive and scream at the player, immediately flashing back to show it was a vision and another collectible is available, a simple map pinned to it, from here onwards the player has the power to explore the entire town, being the town itself which is full of a variety of little events and random things to watch or find or depart on an actual mini scenario in the 9 various points of interest, advertised by the lighting, and accessible even after the events take place:

- Drug Store

- Health Centre

- Town Hall

- Police Depot

- Abandoned House

- School

- General Store

- Church

- Desolate House (Final Scene)

Each will be elaborated on in later posts and the rest if the story itself being why you, the player have been brought here, what has happened here, who was the figure and more however we are hoping to be up to the point of exploration and the scarecrow by the time of our pitch, to have a demo to show.

Welcome to Brighthaven!

When colliding all the aspects and settings we wanted for our games main setting. We came up with the following design and layout, the player would stay south and work his way into the town which is where the story will unravel:

Realism is Key... Sometimes...

Basically we were thinking a physical horror with ghosts and ghouls earlier like games like slender and silent hill, but we were thinking that's too easy and suggestive fear is better, we've come up with the more thriller side which is what brought us to a more Alan wake / Number 23 story all based in a town much like how silent hills are yet not bringing supernatural aspects in and making the town itself scary, with a mixture of ALOT of game aspects stated before, but we still want the shock horror feel and psychedelic/halucagenic like horror style that is suggested from the mind, making it more realistic as anything can happen in your head!

Role taking time.

We have grasped a truly gripping story that's evolving as I speak, we've been playing every game from silent hill to dead space and watching such movies too and done some research as you can see below, we will update with the story as it is finalised, we're gonna take lead rolls this year this time and backup rolls incase, as doing a bit of everything like we did in our previous project slowed things down a tad last time, and we ended up specialising anyway so we'll stick to those tasks. Were also gonna try not to go off track, stick to what's planned etc, we have a story and once it's finalised that's final and were focus on that, we shall design and plan every little aspect and have it to paper before anything unlike last time where we found a basis and made a lot up as we went.

Here is out role plan:

Phil: Lead texturer and support 3D modeller.

Josh: Lead Modeler and support animator.

Kieran: Lead animator and support concept  design.

Billy: Lead concept design and support  coder.

Cameron: Lead Coder and support texturer.

Research Time! Let's Play some games!

For our research, we looked into the following games: 

- Silent Hill 2

- Slender: The Arrival

- BioShock 

- Dead Space

- Condemned 2

- Fatal Frame

- Alan Wake

- Alone in the Dark

We took many notes of aspects we liked and didn't like and what we really wanted in our game as we felt we could create something amazing using only the best aspects and bringing them together: 

- Very story based! Makes it!

- First person - Personal!

- Minimal music - realistic - erie Implemented by player perhaps - SFX

- Explore - no certain objective - fear of being lost - panic.

- Darkness - low lighting - fog - shadows - dear of darkness - unknowing

- Moonlighting - tint the game - artistically builds a cold dark style

- Torch? Camera? Candle/lighter?

- Not the obvious - SURPRISE!

- Loud noise and jumpy - easy... Cheap.. But.. EFFECTIVE!

-  Small spaces - enclosed - close quarters -claustrophobic? 

- No HUD or GUI, physical object? More realism, be the character.

- Not an action game more investigative? More thrills/horror?

- 3D sounds set scenes!

- Realistic mechanics. Immersive.

- Cinematic will be done! To an extent, not to give to much away, leave that to the player?

- Motion blurs + field depth = sexy!

- Collectables, adds to story, find out secrets and Easter eggs?

- SCARY STUFF = REAL HUMANS, but not how they are regularly portrayed? Mutant? Gore?

- Being followed? heads follow in windows etc, have no relevance, just to freak out player?

- Figures, lack of identity.

- Random movements (swings wheels chair) disturbing the player?

These are all things we would like our game to be comprised of.

Fear is the Key!

Right so been looking into themes and stuff and really like the idea of fear, now by this we mean to actually divulge on fear and love the idea of playing on the natural fears of humans as that's not bringing in ghoulies or making the player jump necessarily. As wiki states the most common are these:

According to surveys, some of the most common fears are of ghosts, the existence of evil powers, cockroaches, spiders, snakes, heights, water, enclosed spaces, tunnels, bridges, needles.

Which gives a wide range to play with, we could make something really physiological and create a beautiful story too, I also read this little write up a whole back and took me ages to find but here it is, I love the idea of playing on a realistic, hidden historical feel, really shakes the player up haha I think this lil write up is a great basis to a game, focusing say a demon or something with those characteristics?:

Many classic horror icons, such as Giger’s Xenomorphs, Silent Hill’s Pyramid Head, and other disturbing creatures, share common characteristics. Pale skin, dark, sunken eyes, elongated faces, sharp teeth, and the like. These images inspire horror and revulsion in many, and with good reason. The characteristics shared by these faces are imprinted in the human mind.

Many things frighten humans instinctively. The fear is natural, and does not need to be reinforced in order to terrify. The fears are species-wide, stemming from dark times in the past when lightning could mean the burning of your tree home, thunder could be the approaching gallops of a stampede, predators could hide in darkness, and heights could make poor footing lethal.

The question you have to ask yourself is this:

What happened, deep in the hidden eras before history began, that could effect the entire human race so evenly as to give the entire species a deep, instinctual, and lasting fear of pale beings with dark, sunken eyes, razor sharp teeth, and elongated faces?

… Just be careful out there.

And this brings me to focusing on a more historical matter perhaps? A game that is really story based enough to shake up the player, from these statements I rustled up images such as the one below:

We Need Niche

If we want to run with the horror idea we need to plug something to set us apart from other titles, baring in mind we have the past third year projects and now the last years projects to compete with, we were thinking about doing a find the light kind of thing for example picking up a used lighter on the floor gives you 20 seconds that monsters won't come, switching on a generator gives you 2 minutes then the lights start to flicker etc, aspects of the game that we haven't seen in other games that can give it an edge.

Taster Time

We made a quick basic model of a ghouly guy, and  played with some basic, pro and downloaded unity assets, and got some beautiful effects going just as a test to see what we could create and what style we'd like. Like relction and refraction with water and glass, wind andreal time  movement and shadows with trees and glass, and some basic hi-def textures and just to play with to attempt a scary night time setting, pretty good attemp.

Decisions, Decisions...

We don't know why but were really edging to a horror game now, We like the replay-ability factor, and the idea of a more surreal and variety of things we can do with it, as I think the ninja game is a pretty solid idea in itself so could be a side project for a later date as it doesn't have enough variety in it, it will stay a repetitive same old game. 

Early Ideas...

We've found the game will need a backbone to base the entire game on do starting with some character/style designs for the games was the best place to start. 

Possible ideas for a ghost based Horror.

Possible styling idea for a ninja based game

And so it begins... Again... But earlier?

So since we didn't want to be say down twiddling our thumbs, we thought it best to get started ok our third year game early, since the more time the better. As a group we were edging between two main ideas for our next project, firstly a side-scrolling-esc hack-n-slash ninja based game, focuses on a more artistic and story based game with simply and easy to play mechanics, with a similar art style to games such as Zelda: Wind Waker and Ōkami. 

Ōkami

Wind Waker

Our second idea was a horror/thriller based game, this is because our last project was a more toon based game and we feel a more realistic challenge would be more fun and challenging to take on this year, we'd like to create a game focused around the Silent Hill games with a sense of hammer horror and subtle plays on fear as this is something that has really interested us, we've also looked into games such as Condemned, Alan Wake, Fatal Frame, Dead Space, BioShock, Alone in the Dark, Slender: The Arrival. We love aspects of plot twists and variation of play dependant on the player such as Silent Hill 2 portrays and the use of lighting in Alan Wake. Also the small events of random frights that Condemned 2 gives purely to scare the player and have no relevance in game. We want this to be a very strong story that will leave the player questioning and wanting to play more to find out more. 

Condemned 2

Silent Hill 2

Alan Wake

Alone in the Dark

Fatal Frame

BioShock

Dead Space 

Slender: The Arrival