Game Proposal

    In this game, the player would be placed in a heavily detailed environment, which they would explore to find clues through interacting with objects. The mechanics would be very limited, allowing the player to walk around the space, interact with objects/”clues,” and interact with certain environmental obstacles (such as climbing over something). These interactions would allow them to understand or reveal the story of what happened in the building the game is set in before it was abandoned, with certain actions revealing/destroying possible “clues,” and changing the general picture the player is left with once finishing the game. 

Gameplay/Game Style

    This would be an adventure game, focusing on exploration of an environment and interaction, with no combat. The highlight would be the ability to interact with most objects, as if the player is really exploring an abandoned building, even if only some contribute to the “story” the game is telling. In addition, all of the content of the game would be optional, meaning the character can choose to leave at any point once they are satisfied with what they’ve found.

    The game would be fairly slow-paced, with small animations for each interaction (ranging from kneeling down to look at something to picking something up to opening doors) and a short piece of dialogue and/or reaction for each. It would have entirely fixed camera angles, which would change depending on position and proximity to select clues (for example, a camera angle from the ground highlighting a piece of paper that the player could interact with). 

Setting/Character

    The main character of this game would be a nameless automaton, who never speaks out loud, though her thoughts are heard by the player as they investigate the building. The game would be set in an abandoned bus terminal on a dirt road, surrounded by farrow fields. In the far distance, large alien towers stand miles apart, rising out of the farrow fields.

    The main character is a woman who can only remember bits and pieces of her past, having woken up as a robot in an empty and uninhabited world, dotted with the remains of human civilization. The world is not an apocalypse, and nothing has been damaged or destroyed, but rather abandoned in the truest sense–everyone who once lived there has moved on, left for other places, and allowed the buildings to fall to nature over a long period of time.

    The main story of this game would follow the main character as she finds the evidence left behind by the final bus to leave this bus station, at which point the station was officially abandoned. The main character remembers that she was on this bus, but doesn’t remember why, or who she was, and is trying to reconstruct what happened to her that might have lead her to where she is now.

Art Style/Affects on Gameplay

    The art will only utilize white, black, and light blue, with a focus on the textures of surfaces and dark shadows, inspired heavily by the lighting of White Night (a horror game which uses black, white, and yellow–to show fire–and fixed camera angles). The world and design of the character should be fairly “realistic” models (meaning it won’t use any distinct departures from reality in proportion or the silhouette of objects and buildings), but the actual game will feel quite stylized due to the use of two shades and one color. In addition, the way the abandoned station has decayed will also be quite stylized, as the only plants to begin taking it over are leafless vines and moss with tiny glowing flowers.

    The world will also draw from three distinct aesthetics (contrasted against the intensely rural exterior of dirt and fields), late 90’s technology, including large tv’s and computers, late 60’s/early 70’s brutalist architecture (specifically the architecture of the station), and a kind of cold futuristic style (the architecture of the distant towers and the technology of the main character’s body).

Things glowing blue will be used to represent everything powered–the main character’s eyes (and scarf, though that’s not strictly powered, just fun for me), the computers in the station (if they can be powered and booted up), TV’s, etc. In addition, the flowers of the moss that covers much of the abandoned station will also glow blue, but are not powered.

The time of day it is a transition time–either sunset or sunrise, but it isn’t clear which. This will cast very long shadows through the windows on the front of the station, illuminating some things but casting others into shadow. The shadows in the game will not be able to be lit up, and nothing will be entirely hidden (meaning anything intractable has to have at least some light on it) in them, meaning that the game is strictly divided into light and dark

Concept Art

Reference Images