High Concept

The player controls Cadbury, a mouse mechanic, as he tries to find a secret lab filled with mechanical mice who can drive away the cats plaguing the castle. He must utilize stealth and machines he has made to avoid the cats as he searches for clues.

 

Player Objective

Reach the end of each level without being caught by any cats. At the end of each level is a clue that will help reveal the location of the lab. Collect all of the clues to find it.

 

Game mechanics

• Cadbury can run and jump.
• Additionally, Cadbury has two other “abilities”
  • He has a windup set of mechanical wings on his back, which he can use to fly short distances. To use the wings, he must stop and wind them up.
  • He has a seeker bot, a small robot that can climb on walls. Upon deploying the seeker bot, he will see through the bot’s eyes and be able to scope out areas where the cats are. However, the seeker bot gives off light, and as a result is easily spotted. The seeker bot cannot go too far away from Cadbury, otherwise he will get out of range. Once the seeker bot is pounced upon or starts getting out of range, it automatically returns to Cadbury and can be used again after a short cooldown.
• Cadbury cannot fight at all. A single mouse, even one with technical prowess, stands no chance against a cat. Once a cat catches you, it’s game over.

 

Characters

• Cadbury
  • The protagonist and player character, Cadbury is an adventurous mouse mechanic who enjoys tinkering with machinery. However, unlike most of the other mice, Cadbury is more of a daredevil. He is the only one willing to go and seek out the mad mouse scientist’s mouse army while the cats are out and about. He created his wings and seeker bot himself. Cadbury’s bot and wings are made out of an old radio.
• Guinevere
  • A highly intelligent mouse maiden with a knack for puzzle solving. The lab that Cadbury is searching for belongs to her grandfather, Gilbert. Once Cadbury retrieves the clue from the end of a level, he brings it back to Guinevere, who studies the clues to try and locate the lab.
• Queen Minerva
  • The queen of the land, who is fascinated with all sorts of technology. Back when she was a princess, she enjoyed tinkering with things in her free time, but now that she’s a queen and there is talk of war she only has time to give each new innovation a cursory look before putting it in storage.
• The Cats
  • The cats have been brought in from animal shelters all across England, and are skilled hunters, having mostly been raised on the streets. They are efficient and silent, though occasionally will talk among themselves, if they are not occupied with the hunt.
• Gilbert the Elder
  • A mad scientist, and Guinevere’s grandfather. After his son (Guinevere’s father), a great warrior, died young, he secluded himself and tried to use his skills to create a mechanical replacement. He tried over and over again, eventually creating an army. Alas, while he was able to replicate his son’s appearance and fighting skills to a degree, he was never able to make them more than mechanical shells only capable of following orders.

Key Objects

• Cadbury’s wings
  • Cadbury has windup beetle wings that Cadbury fashioned himself out of an old radio speaker. He has to stop temporarily to wind them up.
• Seeker bot
  • A little remote-control robot that Cadbury created to get into hard-to-reach spots and cracks. It’s made out of old radio and radar parts.
    • Incidentally, the radar parts are from the same radar that led to the cats being brought into the castle.
• Clues
  • At the end of every level, there is a puzzle left by Gilbert. Gilbert did not want to return until he brought his son back, but he was one of the most skilled mechanics in the mouse world. He left a series of puzzles that revealed his location, should he ever be needed.

 

Game World

The year is 1938. New technology is constantly being invented, and Queen Minerva has gained a reputation with being fascinated with new tech. Any new prototypes–speakers, televisions, radios, radars–are sent right to the castle. However, with talk of war, Queen Minerva doesn’t have much time to test and tinker with the inventions before they are stored away. The mice who inhabited the castle found the new tech fascinating. They discovered that their tiny bodies and paws were excellent for dismantling old, unwanted tech and stripping it for parts. They created new, tiny machines out of the stored inventions and used it to their advantage–for example, they created an advanced pulley system attached to one of the legs of the table to hoist themselves onto it to get the best bread and cheese, instead of relying on the scraps that fall to the floor.

 

The mice take great care to hide their technological advancements. The table pulley is hidden underneath the tablecloth, and they take it down anytime it’s about to be changed. As a result, the humans are quite oblivious to the mouse machinery. However, they’ve seen the mice carrying around shiny things and have discovered mouseholes in the tech storage rooms.

With the second world war on the horizon, one of the queen’s generals requested an old, obsolete version of the radio from within her storage, believing that the older version of broadcasting signals could be combined with the modern radar to be even more powerful. Alas, when they went to retrieve it, they found it stripped for parts by the mice. The queen retrieves all of the cats from shelters all around London and sets them to work hunting the mice so that no more potentially valuable tech is damaged.

The mice are understandably terrified. They may be smart, but they are still frail and outnumbered. Stories have been told about Gilbert, a disgraced mouse scientist, who created an army of mechanical mice hidden away in some deep, secluded part of the castle. Cadbury is on a mission to locate this hidden lab and save his people.

 

Gameplay Highlights/Hooks/Features

As the game progresses, different venues are seen. You start in the basement, with dreary pipes and cracked dungeon walls, and only the occasional cat. As you progress upward through the castle, the cats swarm more, and have different patterns. Some cats simply patrol the same areas over and over again, some will stop and listen for movement, then progress in the direction of that movement, and some will wait unless something like a seeker bot draws them away. There are more and more cats as the player progresses, and the real sense of challenge and accomplishment at overcoming the challenge will entice players to continue. Additionally, all is not well in the mouse colony: upon returning to Guinevere, she (or the scene that you arrive back to) will give you insight as to how the colony is getting more and more stressed about the cats, how they don’t believe the plan will work, and what new mouse has fallen prey to the hunters, somewhat mirroring the distressed state of the castle as they scramble frantically to prepare for an upcoming war.

 

Intended Audience

Steampunk-style games with a compelling story have a niche but passionate audience. The Dishonored and BioShock serieses are examples of this. However, currently there is a gap in the market. The most recent Dishonored game came out in 2016, and the BioShock series ended in 2013. 2018’s We Happy Few attempted to fill that gap, and was praised for its story, but lacked in many other areas, resulting in only lukewarm reviews. Many expressed disappointment about the game, hoping that it would be “the new BioShock.” This disappointment means that a new game that is more fitting of that label could easily swoop in and take its place. Additionally, the combat in the BioShock series and in We Happy Few has been widely criticized, though the environmental storytelling has been praised. By removing combat and focusing more on this storytelling, these potential complaints could be avoided. The Dishonored series focuses more on stealth, and these stealth mechanics have been received more favorably. By trying to emulate the stealth gameplay from Dishonored, the environment-driven storytelling from BioShock and We Happy Few, and the steampunk art direction from each of them, it would be possible to tap into the largest and most passionate audience.

 

Game Style/Player Experience

The gameplay should keep players on edge, and encourage a slower style of play. Since Cadbury cannot attack, and the cats are much larger than him, the presence of any cat should be truly menacing. The player must be cautious and calculating about their movements and strategies in order to avoid being detected. As they do so, they will need to utilize their wings, seeker bot, and the environment to their advantage to make it to the end of the level.

 

Pictured in this rough sketch is Cadbury using his wings to fly from one platform to another, unbeknownst to the cat below.