Game name: Forsaken Hex
Essential Experience: I want the player to experience feelings of humanity.
Pitch: Embark on a witch’s path to ascension, where every soul claimed and coven secret unravelled forge a path of power, betrayal, and moral consequence.
Story Overview: The story centres around a newbie witch, trying to find the right coven to reside in. Their new coven tasks them with an initiation to harvest 5 mutated creatures’ souls and return them for an undisclosed reason. They must traverse the lands of The Spirit Yonder but something doesn’t seem right, there appears to be an indication of corruptive actions. Determined to find the truth with their moral compass, the newbie has the choice to harvest or exorcise the souls of the mutated creatures. What happens if you choose to deter from the coven orders?
Overview: Forsaken Hex is a narrative choice-driven journey challenging the players’ humanity every step of the way. This side-scroller adventure game follows an apprentice witch through their path to acceptance into a new coven… Will this community match their morals? After the protagonist digs around the world’s environment they uncover diary entries of previous coven members experiences. Eventually, it is uncovered that the coven had hexed those previous coven members into hideous mutated creatures of the land as punishment for not following their immoral practices of harvesting the souls of the innocent. As the protagonist nears the full truth, if the protagonist decides to exorcise the majority of the souls, the coven will become more hostile towards them and the game will have the climax of fighting against the coven leader. If the player chooses the other path of harvesting, the morality of the protagonist will fit into the coven’s darker personality and will feel as though they don’t belong there.
Core Mechanics:
- Rhythm minigames: Weaken enemies through an interactive minigame utilising inputting a sequence of shown buttons in quick succession.
- Exploration: Immerse yourself in the world of The Spirit Yonder, housing different climates home to the different enemy types you will encounter on your journey.
Gameplay Experience & Player Motivation: I want the player to explore this world and choose a path that tests their morals. The player’s motivation would depend on the path you take within the story, the good path would be exorcising all the mutated animals and going against the figure of authority, the coven leader, this playthrough would end with the player going against the coven in battle. The bad path would be harvesting all the souls of the mutated creatures, following their main objective, and ending up being accepted into the coven and proving yourself to the coven leader.
Platform: This game would be aimed at PC and web play. This will require keyboard and mouse bindings and spec testing. This game should be simple to meet this and when demand increases in the future, I plan to allow for a multi-platform update would be released, allowing for consoles to experience this game.
Intended Target Audience: Forsaken Hex would be suitable for all ages if it weren’t for the underlying dark tones of the narrative and fighting mechanics (violence), I feel that this game would be suitable for PEGI 12 or a ESRB rating of Teens (T).