People: The main character, and the only playable one, is a young girl by the name of Ashley. Settling in for her first night at summer camp- her first time away from home for any significant period- her initial excitement is quickly stamped out as she looks into a mirror for the night and sees a monster. Now, she wants to call home, but she doesn’t want to get caught looking like /this/.

Places: It’s a traditional summer camp, set around the mid 2010s. The game is set at night time, with the environment twisted by Ashley’s fear and the darkness to exaggerate the creepy factor.

Things: Lights serve as the ‘not’ hiding spot, the places where you get caught, while moving boxes, trashcans, bushes and trees serve as hiding spaces.

Style: Semi-stylized. Grounded is what immediately comes to mind when I’m thinking about the human proportions, slightly stretched but within the realm of realism. I want the world to be kept in very cold hues, with this feeling that the player isn’t ‘invited’ to be here. Take warm campgrounds and make them eerie with cool lighting. Exaggeration will come in the environment, stretching element

Gameplay: The core gameplay involves sneaking through the campsite, trying to avoid being seen as she currently appears. She could get caught by waking others up, or spending too long in the light.

Game Concept Sketch

Reference Images/Moodboard

Little Nightmares 2 gives a strong feeling of ‘wrongness’ to familiar places that I’d like to incorporate.

Monster’s University also uses darkness in this scene to put the viewer in the police officer’s shoes, using the shadows to obscure information, and cool lighting for eeriness!

The overall sense of unease the forest can add to a scene is really helpful when i comes to contrasting what’s meant to be a nice and warm summer camp.

There’s going to be a major focus on campgrounds and the overall scenery, playing with the open space to make the player concerned about their stealth.

Changelings serve as the major inspiration for Ashley’s design and background, she’s discovering something about herself that, to her, is very ugly and needs to be covered up. The idea of a character discovering they’ve always been “something else” is a very fun one for me overall.

I’ll also mention My Little Pony’s changelings were my first introduction to the concept of changelings overall, and are a bit of a driving feature behind my own interest in shapeshifting bug people.